Die Another Day
by bookgodess15
Summary: House is having some serious bad luck. Errant baseballs, falling telephone poles, collapsing balconies, leaking gas lines... And if that wasn't enough, who the hell picked Chase to be the knight in shining armor? 30 Days and Nights of House/Chase
1. Day One

**Author's Note: **Inspired by Prompt #16: _A patient predicts that House will die in three days. House thinks it's a load of crap, but Chase doesn't. Does he try to save House? What if House really does need saving?_ I sort of took it down another track, though. You'll see.

* * *

**Die Another Day**

**Day 1**

The door shut behind them, and House continued walking. He ignored his team, who had very obviously been expecting him to stop and talk about what had just happened in the room. House wasn't so keen on the idea. However, taking them by surprise really only delayed them, which was why he heard footsteps running up behind him not thirty seconds later. Grimacing, House didn't even look behind him to see who had followed him.

"I'm not going to die," he said loudly, causing several other people to glance his way.

"But—"

"Really," House said, cutting Cameron across. The footsteps persisted. "And if I do, I promise I'll leave you with a good recommendation for your next job. Boy Scout's honor."

"I'm not saying that I believe you're going to die in three days," Cameron said defensively. "But everything else she's predicted has come true."

"Then why am _I_ the one trying to figure out what's wrong with her?" House asked.

He heard Cameron sigh. "Don't you feel a little bit disturbed? Someone just told you that you're going to die."

"People tell me that I'm going to do all sorts of things," House said, heading for the elevators. The plan was to jump on a really crowded one and lose Cameron. "Nine times out of ten, they don't happen. Take Cuddy, for example. She—"

"Just be cautious for a few days," Cameron said, a note of pleading in her voice. "Indulge me. I don't want to go job-hunting."

House used his cane to punch the elevator button. His plan hadn't worked so well, as there wasn't a soul to be found in the hallway, but maybe he could get on and close the doors real quick. "I'll be careful. Just for you, Cameron, because I wouldn't want to put you through the trouble of finding another misanthropic boss to fall in love with. I hear that a lot of them are taken, these days."

"Be serious," Cameron said, finally stepping into his line of vision.

House held up his left pinky. "I solemnly swear."

With a frustrated huff, Cameron spun on her heel and marched away.

The elevator doors opened with a ding.

* * *

An hour later, House had his ducklings assembled in the conference room. They were shooting out diagnosis after diagnosis, almost faster than House could shoot them down, and the most irritating part of it all wasn't even the fact that Cameron was giving him mournful looks whenever she thought he wasn't looking. It was the fact that even Foreman—freaking _Foreman—_seemed to believe that this woman could predict the future. They kept excluding it as a symptom.

House scowled as Foreman suggested leukemia, and pulled out his bottle of Vicodin. "Leukemia doesn't cause any mental problems," he said, leaning back in his chair (after ten minutes of standing and not receiving a single satisfactory diagnosis, he'd given up and sat down). "Next."

"We really don't have any evidence of mental problems," Cameron pointed out.

House opened his mouth.

"Even if the fortune-telling isn't real," Cameron added hastily. "Lots of people believe they can see into the future or into your past lives and stuff. It doesn't make them psychotic."

"It makes them quacks," House said irritably. "We're treating it as a symptom. This could be the first step in a series of progressions—what disease starts with symptoms like tingling in the extremities and magical powers? None. What disease starts with symptoms like tingling in the extremities and _thinking_ you have magical powers?"

"Tumor," Chase said.

House rattled his bottle, checking to make sure that they'd filled it with the full seventy pills he was owed, and then twisted off the cap. "Where?"

"Spinal cord, probably," Chase said with a shrug. "Or maybe it started in the brain and metastasized."

"If she had any metastasized tumors, she would have been dead by now," House said, but the idea was worth some consideration. He set down the open bottle of Vicodin and stood up, grabbed his cane, and limped over to the white board. "Tumor. Somewhere in the spinal cord and/or brain. I'm glad we're narrowing this down."

"What if there's a problem with the meninges?" Foreman suggested. "It could caused reduced blood flow, which would cause—"

"Migraines," House said, cutting him across. "Which our patient has no history of."

Three pagers went off, just as he finished speaking.

"Janet," Cameron said, getting out of her chair. "It's a 911 page."

House jerked his thumb at the door, although it wasn't really necessary for him to have to tell his team to go. Foreman and Chase were already up and out of their seats, pushing chairs in and getting ready to leave the room—except that as Chase walked past the table, he bumped it.

Pills went everywhere, and the bottle rolled into one of the legs of the table.

"Chase!" House barked, and all three of them froze, nearly out the door. "Pick it up!"

Cameron and Foreman were out like shots, leaving House and Chase alone.

House pointed to the mess of pills all over the floor. "Pick it up. And make sure you get all seventy of them."

Obviously gritting his teeth in irritation, Chase crossed over to the table in two strides and crouched down to begin picking up the pills one by one and placing them back in the little orange tube. House scowled at him, and then turned to the white board and grudgingly added Foreman's diagnosis to the small list they'd come up with. A glance at the clock told him that it was nearly dinner time, which meant that he would have to go over to Wilson's office and bother him for money pretty soon. If he waited much longer, Wilson would leave for the day and he'd have to pay for food with his own money.

"Um, House?" Chase said hesitantly.

Rolling his eyes and readying himself for whatever stupid question Chase had for him, House turned around. "What?"

"How many of these have you taken?" Chase asked. He was down on his knees, but he'd stopped picking them up and was holding a single pill between his fingers.

House frowned suspiciously. "Why?"

Chase glanced up at him. "These aren't Vicodin. They're 40mg Ritalin capsules. If you've taken more than two of these today, we need to get you down to the ER and—"

"I haven't taken any yet," House interrupted, before Chase could start panicking.

"The pharmacy must have mixed them up," Chase said, pushing himself up off the ground and showing the handful of pills to House. "They're damn lucky you didn't take any of these. At the rate you go through Vicodin, you'd have been dead by tomo—"

"Yeah, I know," House snapped, turning away from Chase to head toward the door. "Go rip Marco a new one, get me more Vicodin, and then find out what happened to the witch."

He heard Chase sigh, just before he pushed open the door.

* * *

"House? I heard about what happened with your Vicodin," Cameron said softly as she entered the room.

House, having just sat down with his dinner, looked up at the unpleasant interruption with a scowl on his face. "And you felt the need to come in and announce that?"

Cameron stopped just before his desk, eyeing the sandwich and bag of Skittles sitting on House's desk. "No. But, I mean, if you'd taken those drugs... House, you would have died."

"Yes, I know that," House said. He began peeling off the plastic wrap from his sandwich. "Lucky thing _Chase_ was there to save me."

Blinking, Cameron paused for a moment. House could practically see her summoning resolve. "Don't you remember? Janet said that you'd be dead in _three days_. I just... Doesn't that kind of freak you out? Do you really think that was just a coincidence?"

"Yep," House said, nodding. He reached behind his desk and pulled out a dollar. "Here. Go buy me a Coke. Keep the change."

Cameron stared at the bill. "It's a dollar fifty for a Coke."

House extended his hand further. "Then you can keep your own change. Go on, run along."

It looked like Cameron wasn't going to take the it, but then Chase came in with a file in his hand, and she snatched the dollar bill out of his hand and walked away. Chase looked over his shoulder, clearly surprised by Cameron's abrupt departure, but he continued walking towards House's desk after a second or two. He blew out a breath as he stopped, standing about three feet farther away from House's desk than Cameron had had the decency to do, and opened the file.

"Spinal tap was negative," Chase announced.

House held back a sigh of his own. Damn.

Chase had to take a step forward to get within reach, but he held out the file for House to take. "Nothing unusual. We finished the procedure just as another migraine came on, and as long as it persists, we can't redo the test. So no redo for a while. Sorry."

Nodding, House skimmed the results, but Chase was right. Everything was normal.

"All right," House said, handing Chase the file. "So what next?"

Chase shrugged. "Well, I don't think we've given her a pelvic exam yet."

House forced his snort of laughter to die soundlessly in his throat. "You're not funny. Give me ideas." He reached for his red tennis ball and threw it at Chase, and then started working on the plastic wrap around his sandwich.

"Full body scan," Chase said after a pause.

"I hate full body scans," House said, peeling the rest of the plastic wrap off of his sandwich. "They take forever. And you're talking needles in haystacks—except everything that resembles a needle has to be carefully processed, tested and treated."

"What else is there left to do? And it's evening. We'll do the test, and you can go home and sleep. Everybody wins." Chase shrugged one shoulder and gave House a sort of strained smile.

House took a large bite of his sandwich to give him time to think it over. He hated full body scans. Even if he didn't have to put up with the actual doing of the test, there would still be hours of analysis that he'd have to participate in and no matter how benign and unrelated their findings were, they still had to treat it. It would take the better part of tomorrow, and the longer it took to agonize over hundreds of photos the longer they were allowing Jane or whatever the hell her name was to deteriorate.

He swallowed, ready to tell Chase that they needed to brainstorm one more time to make sure that they were really ready to go so broad with their tests, when something caught in his throat. Something—something that wasn't food. It was like a rubber stopper, lodging itself in his throat and sealing off the passageway to his lungs. House tried to cough, but it wasn't moving. He couldn't breathe.

"House? House, are you okay?"

House nodded, but Chase wasn't listening to him. He came up to the desk and leaned over, looking House in the eyes.

"Are you choking? Can you breathe at all?" Chase asked, grabbing the sandwich out of his hands and setting it down on the desk.

Desperate to breathe, House shook his head and tried to cough again. He could feel his throat tightening and his eyes began to water. Panic was setting in.

"Shit," he heard Chase mutter, and then suddenly he was gone. He couldn't see Chase anymore. Where had he gone? What was going on? He couldn't breathe, he needed to get air fast because his vision was started to blacken and his lungs were burning like someone had thrown a lit match down there.

Then someone was pulling him to his feet, out of his chair and up on his feet except he didn't want to stand—he couldn't support himself. He was getting dizzy and—

Something squeezed his stomach hard, and he felt the most peculiar sensation in his throat. Then it was there again, compressing his middle and straining his lungs as they tried to expel air but were blocked. His vision was really fading now, and House could hear his heart beating like it was in his ears. He felt himself stumble, but then he was squeezed again, and something in his throat came rushing up into his mouth, and he gagged. Coughing, choking, he found himself doubled over as the thing fought its way up through his mouth. It was on his tongue, all over his tongue and he couldn't—couldn't—

And then it was out.

House's vision swam, and he would have fallen over if it weren't for someone's arms around his stomach. He was wheezing and coughing, and he swore that if those were _tears_ running down his face he was going to punch Chase in the face for not getting whatever it had been out of his throat sooner.

Right. Chase. He would be the one who had his arms wrapped around House's waist.

"I'm fine," House rasped, blinking around until he caught sight of his chair. Walking shakily forward (Chase didn't let go), House made it to his chair and collapsed into it. He felt exhausted, and it hurt to breathe. His head spun.

"It's... It's a coupon," Chase said slowly, from somewhere else in the room. "It must have been slipped into your sandwich by accident."

House opened his eyes and looked around the room. Eventually, he zeroed in on Chase and their eyes locked.

"Coincidence," he said, and even though it came out in only whisper, the word weighed heavily enough. House knew that Janet's prediction was settling just as heavily on Chase's mind as it was on his.

Chase blinked, and then dropped the coupon into the trashcan. "Coincidence."

* * *

House was up on the roof. He hadn't come up here to escape, just to be alone—if that made any sense. Their patient was still deteriorating, and despite Chase's offer for a night off while his ducklings worked on the full body scan, House hadn't been able to go home. Maybe if he'd spent last night at the hospital, but now, he was running on last night's sleep just fine. Here at the hospital, he'd get updates within minutes and wouldn't have to drive all the way back to the hospital to deal with them.

The sun was almost set, casting a few last rays of pink and gold over the edge of the sky as it died. House liked this kind of weather. It was hot, but not muggy, and the sound of crickets and a pick-up game of baseball almost reminded him of a few happier days in his childhood. He was sitting on the ledge of the building, wishing that he'd thought to being a cigarette or two up with him. If there was one thing that would make this dusky setting perfect, it would be a cigarette. And maybe a few lovely entertaining ladies.

"House?"

The sound of feet interrupted his summery bliss, and House inhaled a long breath before turning to the intruders.

Foreman and Chase. Spectacular.

"Done so fast?" House asked, arching an eyebrow.

They stopped in front of him, Foreman in those ludicrous pink scrubs of his. House watched them exchange a glance, and just when he was about to demand that one of them speak, Foreman opened his mouth.

"They've medicated her for the migraine, but now we can't do the MRI. They've got her on an EKG for the next hour or so," Foreman said. There was a bit of defiance in his posture, which irritated House almost as much as the bad news did.

"Excellent," he said dryly. If only he had that cigarette, he could have paused and taken a long drag, right there, thus creating a dramatic pause before he revealed his position. But again, there were no cigarettes up on the roof with him. So he had to make do with glancing up to the sky thoughtfully. "Wait it out. There's nothing—"

Something went streaking through the air like a bullet, and then there was a sickening crack, and Chase went cross-eyed. A second later, he slumped and would have fell to the ground if Foreman hadn't caught him. House watched as Foreman lowered Chase to the ground carefully, and then his eyes went past Chase to see a baseball rolling to a stop over by the boiler.

House glanced behind him and down at the seventy foot-or-so fall that awaited him. He swallowed, knowing that if Chase hadn't been standing there to take the blow, the baseball would have hit him in the head and sent him backwards over the ledge, and he would have fallen to his death.

So maybe it wasn't coincidence after all.


	2. Day Two

**Die Another Day**

**Day 2  
**_(00:01—12:00)_

"So now Cameron and Foreman are out running that full-body scan, and you're taking up space on my couch. And believe me, that's unfortunate for you, because I can't leave you unsupervised and if I admit you, then you'll have to be put on bed rest. So wake up. I want to sleep and you need to go help your brother and sister with that scan." House paused to take a long drink from his Sprite. He swallowed, glanced down at Chase to see if the talking had done any good (it hadn't), and then continued. "And don't get any funny ideas about life debts. You may have saved my life three times today, but it doesn't mean that I owe you anything. You didn't _have _to save me."

Chase mumbled something, but House had given up on discerning the words about an hour ago. Whatever Chase had to say in his dream, it wasn't interesting enough for House to put his ear up to Chase's lips to find out.

"Anyway, it's not like you really saved me. I would have noticed that I was taking Ritalin before I downed half the bottle. And a few pills wouldn't have killed me anyway. And my gag reflex would have kicked in eventually, so I would... Hey, are you waking up over there?"

The talking was getting louder. It had been this loud a half an hour ago, but Chase had gone back to sleep. Now, though, House was talking to him and that would hopefully get him up sooner.

"Hey! Wake up! You've got work to do," House said loudly. He considered splashing Chase with Sprite, but reconsidered when he remembered that he would be sleeping on that couch as soon as Chase got up, and sleeping on a wet couch was not exactly idyllic. So he settled for talking. "Come on, pretty boy. Up and at 'em!"

Chase was indeed stirring. House heard the mumbling meld into a long groan, and a hand went up to his head.

"Let's go, let's go! Get up." House reached for his cane, ready to take over the couch.

Blearily, Chase opened his eyes and immediately shut them, throwing his forearm over his eyes to block out the light from the lamp. "House?"

"Yep. Tough it out, blondie, the couch is mine," House said, standing up. He did, after a second's hesitation, shut off the light.

"What—why am I on your couch?" Chase said slowly, now blinking in the darkness. He lowered his arm and brought a hand to the back of his head. "And why is there an—an icepick stabbing at the back of my head? The last thing I remember is going up... up on the roof to..."

"Tell me that you couldn't start the scan yet," House finished. "Baseball came out of nowhere. Saved my life—_again_. Try not to make it a habit, okay?"

Gently, Chase pushed himself up. "I have a concussion."

"Yes, that's generally associated with hours of unconsciousness," House said dryly. "However, if you can count to ten, then I'm clearing you for work. The black and pink ranger need you."

A grin slowly worked its way onto Chase's face. "Does that mean I'm the red ranger?"

"No," House said, scowling at him. "That's me. You're blue ranger. That's the dorky one, right?"

"Only in the good ones," Chase muttered, rubbing the back of his head. He sighed. "Okay. Write me a scrip to get rid of the sledgehammer and I'll go."

"I thought it was an icepick," House commented as he limped over to his desk to get his pad. Hopefully, it was in the top drawer where he thought he'd left is last. Otherwise, Chase was SOL for medication, and he'd have to go beg Cameron and Foreman.

"It's been upgraded," Chase said, leaning back against the couch and staring up at the ceiling. He looked as if he was fighting the urge to fall asleep right there.

Thankfully, the prescription pad was indeed in the top drawer and House scribbled down an order for some extra-strength ibuprofen. He didn't need Chase drugged up to the gills during this scan, and besides that, it was just a little pain. Chase could suck it up and take it like a man.

"Thanks," Chase said, taking the scrip without moving. He sat there for three seconds, and finally got moving when House cleared his throat pointedly. "Going, going..." Chase mumbled, opening his eyes and slowly pushing himself off of the couch. He paused, swayed on the spot, and then began walking towards the door. When he made it out the door without tripping, House was sure that Chase would be fine for at least the next few hours, and he laid down on the couch to sleep.

oOo

House woke up the next morning with a somewhat stiff neck, but it faded as he made his way down to the cafeteria. He picked up a donut and a coffee, and ate the donut on the walk back to his office. He chewed carefully this time, making sure that there were no more errant coupons embedded in the donut before he swallowed. He made it back to his office without almost dying at all, and that was a relief. Maybe is had just been yesterday. It came in threes and sevens, right? He'd take the threes.

It was cool outside. It was still early June, so the morning mist was freezing in contrast to the warm rays of the sun, and House rather liked the paradox. That was probably why he was out on his balcony right now. It was somewhat peaceful at this early hour. Maybe those crazy early birds had something here—it wasn't so bad sitting out in the morning with the sounds of the city waking up. It wouldn't hold his entertainment for more than fifteen minutes, but after he got bored, he could always go in and bother Wilson or get his Gameboy from his office...

Or not. Wilson wasn't here today, he remembered as he caught sight of the closed blinds, and his Gameboy was still without batteries. Maybe he'd get his yo-yo and practice walking the dog or something. Anyway, his team should be coming in here soon with the full-body scan, and then he'd have to get to work scanning hundreds of images. Blech.

House tipped his coffee upwards, trying to get the last few drops to trickle down into his mouth—because he _knew_ there was a little more in there—without success. They must have been stubbornly clinging to the bottom, and House tapped it to get them to rolling down the side

There was a crack.

Bringing the coffee cup down, House looked around for the source of the noise. He didn't see any cars, no people out on the lawn, no dogs—

Another crack, this one louder, and the world suddenly slanted forward. House grabbed at the concrete wall, throwing his coffee to the ground below, and tried to ignore the panic that was pounding his heart. His mind raced as he took in the situation, and the more details he saw, the more terrified he became.

The balcony was falling off of the wall. He could see the broken metal and wood that had been embedded in the concrete sticking out of the wall—it was only Wilson's side that was still holding the whole thing to the wall. It was still solidly connected to the wall. House was on the far end of the balcony, the farthest away from his door that he could possibly be, and that would have to change if he didn't want to plummet to the ground with this balcony. And considering the fact that he was suspended four stories above the ground, he didn't particularly think it would be a good idea.

It wasn't that simple, though. At the angle the balcony had fallen, he would just barely be able to walk up to his door to get back in. If the balcony gave way a little more, he'd have to crawl and he didn't think that he could do that. He had to get up to his door, and fast, otherwise he would die. He would die. It wasn't coming in threes, it was coming in sevens and he needed to survive to take on number five.

House took a careful step forward, shifting his weight, and the balcony didn't give way.

Feeling slightly more courageous, he took another step, and then another. A slight grin formed on his face as the balcony remained stationary, and the distance from the door gradually lessened. Counting the steps in his head, House focused on the concrete below him and refused to look up at the spot where the balcony had broken away from the wall. Five feet, four feet, three feet, two feet, one—

Almost collapsing with gratefulness, House reached up and grabbed the handle of the door that led into his office and pulled it.

Except it didn't move.

House pulled on it again, harder this time, but the door didn't budge. Hooking his cane around his arm, House put both hands on the door handle and yanked.

Wilson's half of the balcony began to give way, and House's feet slipped out from underneath him. He gripped the door handle as tightly as he could, and it was the only thing that had kept him from sliding all the way down to the end of the balcony, which probably would have had enough of an impact to break off the rest of the balcony and send him—no, not the train of thought he wanted to go down at the moment. Right now, he was alive. He still had his cane. The only problem was that the door wouldn't open.

House squinted in, through a glare on the glass, and felt the bottom of his stomach drop out as he realized that the door was locked. His door was locked, Wilson's door would be locked—he was going to die. Jesus Christ, he was going to die.

It sunk in, but it didn't fill him with terror. Instead, he felt a steeling of nerves. If he was going to die, then dammit, it would be after he'd tried his absolute hardest to get out of this. And he still had his vocal cords.

"_Hey!_" he shouted as loudly as he could. "_Hey, a little help out here?_"

His hands ached, and House knew that he could hang from this door handle forever. Studying his options, House took his foot and placed it on the edge of the balcony, the top edge, where it had once formed the corner between the balcony floor and wall of the hospital. Then came the other foot, which was monumentally harder to get up there, because he was essentially getting into a crouched position and that didn't agree with his leg.

"_I'm going to die out here!_" House bellowed into the glass, finally getting both of his feet on the edge of the concrete. The cane wasn't so much hanging from his arm as it was bumping into his feet and kept almost falling off his arm because there wasn't enough distance between his arms and the ground.

Without even thinking about it, he grabbed his cane and threw it away. It wouldn't help him.

There was a splintering sound, and House looked down to see the gap between the concrete and the wall widen. Wilson's balcony was giving way, and it would only be a matter of time before it gave out completely and sent him plummeting to the ground. Would he let go and pray that he could somehow survive the impact? Or should he dangle from the handle of the balcony and pray that someone would find him before his arms grew too tired to hang on any longer? Which way gave him a better chance of surviving?

He was distracted from his thoughts by the sound of a lock turning.

House looked up and saw Chase standing in the doorway, hand on handle.

"Hold on," Chase said, but House had to read his lips because the glass muted most of the sound. Shit. Had _anyone_ heard him screaming? His better option would have been to fall with the concrete, then, if the glass was that thick.

Then the door slid open, and House almost fell off the edge of the concrete as his hands slid to the left, remaining tightly wrapped around the handle. He wouldn't let go until there was something better to grab onto.

"Took you long enough," he snapped, but then immediately realized that he was in _no_ position to be insulting people. He was seconds away from dying and he couldn't keep his mouth shut, not even for the person who was trying to save him.

But Chase rolled his eyes and held out a hand.

House eyed it, considering his options, but he decided that Chase was a pretty safe bet. He took one hand off of the door handle and let it be grabbed by Chase's, and the exchange took only half a second. Less than that. He now had one hand on the door handle and one in Chase's, and he was still precariously balanced on the edge of the concrete.

"Can you walk over the gap?" Chase asked, gripping House's hand so tightly it might have been painful if it weren't for the adrenaline coursing through his body.

There was a muted crack as Wilson's side of the balcony gave way a little more, and the balcony sagged.

"No," House said sarcastically. "I think I'll wait for you to get me a plank."

Despite his words, a second later he pushed himself up—the balcony went lower, but Chase was pulling and House stepped forward before he could even think about it. One foot, and then the other, and as he stumbled into Chase, there was an ear-splitting bang.

The balcony had broken off.

The balcony was plummeting to the ground.

But he wasn't on the balcony.

The sound of the concrete slamming into the ground nearly deafened him, but it woke him up to his surroundings. Chase was not so much standing in front of him as he was leaning up against Chase, chest to chest, and Chase had his arms on his shoulders. The office was quiet, except for the sound of early morning birds chirping and distant cars honking.

"Why aren't you running the body scan?" House demanded, pushing himself away from Chase.

Chase blinked. "_That's_ your first question? You almost died, and you want to know why I'm not running a _body scan?_"

"What, were you looking for gratitude?" House asked.

"No," Chase said defensively. "Just—just—never mind. Stop trying to kill yourself, and then we won't have this problem."

It was House's turn to blink.

"I am _not _trying to kill myself!" he said indignantly. "You keep saving me from freak accidents and it's getting annoying. Now, why are you here and not down with Thing 1 and Thing 2?"

Rolling his eyes, Chase dropped his hands away from House's shoulders. "I came to let you know that we've got the scan, and we've already found three spinal tumors. Foreman and Cameron are coming up in a few minutes with the films." Chase paused and looked House up and down. "Would you like me to go get you a cane, or would you prefer to hop around on one leg for the rest of the day?"

House scowled. "Go down and get me my cane. I dropped it. It should be somewhere near that huge slab of concrete that fell from the sky."

"Right," Chase said, sighing. He took a step away from House. "You're welcome, by the way."

House was about to reply with some acerbic comment when the door opened and Cameron and Foreman came in, bearing the results of the full-body scan.

"Oh goody," House said flatly. He raised his eyebrows at Chase and pointed to the door.

Chase shook his head in exasperation and left, just as Cameron said, "House? Where's your balcony?"

oOo

"House!"

House paused, hand over the down button for the elevator, and turned towards the familiar voice. It was Chase, bearing his cane. Punching the down button, House shifted his weight and offered the metal, hospital-issue cane to Chase in exchange for his own.

"Your balcony is swarming with security and cops," Chase said as he set the metal cane down on the ground. "They've got the area taped off."

House made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat.

"Did you find anything wrong with Janet?" Chase asked, changing the subject when he seemed to realize that House wasn't interested in talking about his collapsed balcony.

"Is that the witch?" House reached out and jabbed the elevator button again, wishing that it would hurry up.

"Yeah," Chase said. "Most people call her Janet."

"She's got a number of benign tumors, but of course, we've got to check them all out. Well. You and Cameron do, anyway. And Foreman thinks he saw something in her brain, so he's doing a CT scan to get another view of it. Fun, fun, fun!" House said brightly. He punched the elevator button again.

"And where are you going?" Chase asked. "Clinic duty?"

The elevator doors opened, and a second later, a gurney was barreling straight at him.

House froze, certain that he was staring at his oncoming death, and his mouth went dry. The gurney was going to plow him over, he would hit the ground, and there was no way he was going to survive this one. Number five would win. This split second between realization and death, he would spend it thinking about how death had won, and that was fine. Things seemed to moving in slow motion. What else was there to think about? It was coming closer, someone shouted something—

A hand grabbed his arm and pulled him sideways, and he stumbled out of the way a second before the gurney would have run him over.

"Watch where you're going!" Chase shouted down the hallway.

The doctor heading the gurney flipped him the bird without turning around.

_Number five, number five, number five_, his mind was repeating. He'd survived number five, and there were only two left.

"House?"

House shook himself out of his thoughts. "Thanks," he said gruffly, and then moved into the empty elevator. "Might as well get on—Cameron's on the second floor in Pathology."

"Sure," Chase said, and House heard him walk into the elevator. "Are you sure that you shouldn't take the stairs? At this rate, the elevator cables are going to snap on you."

House gave him a dirty look and punched the 2 and 1 on the panel of buttons. The elevator doors closed, and with an almost imperceptible jolt, the elevator began to descend. Above the doors, the digital numbers informed them that they were on the fourth floor, and then the third, and then—

And then, predictably, the elevator stopped. House wasn't even surprised when the elevator jolted to a halt, the digital red three wavering between a two and a three so fast that it was dizzying to watch. He looked away and glared at Chase, who was already opening the panel in the elevator wall to get out the phone. House watched him pull out a phone on a metal cord, like the ones in phone booths, and scan a piece of paper that had been taped to the inside of the little panel.

"Hello?" Chase said. His eyes darted over to House, and they had eye contact for a brief moment, and then Chase went back to staring at the wall. "Yes—yes, 3A. Two people. No. Wha—okay. Okay, thanks. Yeah. Bye."

House watched as Chase hung up the phone. "What's up?"

Chase shut the panel with a faint snap, and then turned to face House. "It's some kind of software error. They were installing new software and there's a bug. All the elevators are down. And because we don't have any patients with us, we're low priority."

"You should have told them we had a patient in the elevator," House said, scowling at his employee for his stupidity. "Said they were having a heart attack! Needed to be evacuated stat!"

Opening his mouth, Chase looked as if he was struggling to find the right words to say.

"It doesn't matter now," House said grouchily, leaning against the wall and reaching into his pockets. It took him all of ten seconds to find his cell phone, and he pulled it out and dialed Cuddy's number. As he brought the phone up to his ear, he glanced over to Chase and saw that he was watching House with a rather insultingly wary expression on his face.

Cuddy's phone rang five times before she picked up.

"Cuddles!" House said brightly.

Chase's suspicion dissolved into exasperation as he rolled his eyes and leaned against the wall.

"What do you need?" Cuddy asked, not even bothering to ask who was on the other line.

"The elevators are down," House said. "I'm—"

"I'm not going to get one up and running just for you, House," Cuddy said, cutting him off. "Take the stairs or stay on the floor you're on—they're down and there's nothing I can do."

House scowled. "I don't want to use one, I'm already on one."

"You're stuck on—oh wait! Wait, I need those! Yes, yes, thank you. Sorry, House. You're stuck on the elevator?" Cuddy asked, sounding faintly amused by this.

"Yeah," House said, kicking the wall of the elevator in a slightly petulant way. "And it's not funny, FYI."

"Who else is on the elevator with you?" Cuddy asked.

"Chase," House said. "Does it matter?"

"You know that we have to rescue the elevators with patients on them first," Cuddy began slowly, her tone almost placating. "I can't allow the hospital to—"

"What if I told you that Chase was having a heart attack?" House asked, cutting her morality speech short ("Hey!" Chase protested from the other side of the elevator, but House waved a hand for him to be quiet, and Chase glared but didn't say another word).

"Then you'd probably be lying," Cuddy said, but she didn't carry on. "Patience, House. I promise it won't kill you."

"How about you rescue all your precious patients, and then once they're all safe as houses, you can tell the firemen to come over to our elevator fir—"

Something rattled above him.

House stopped speaking, his head snapping up to the ceiling. His eyes darted to Chase for a second, and saw that he too was staring at the ceiling, and then House heard a faint clank. The elevator had gone silent with tension, listening and bracing for a fall. Cuddy's voice was still coming out of the tinny cell phone speaker, but House had tuned her out long ago. Was this number six? How the hell was he going to get out of this one? There was no way out of an elevator. And dammit, Chase wasn't supposed to go with him. How old was he? Twenty-seven? Chase was supposed to _save_ him, not die alongside him. It wasn't right. At least if he'd been in here alone, he wouldn't have this annoying feel—

The elevator fell a few inches.

"Hey Cuddy?" House said, interrupting her mid-sentence. "The elevator's falling."

"Don't be ridiculous," Cuddy said. "They were just inspected last month. You can't expect me to believe that—"

"Believe it, lady," House snapped.

Chase held out a hand, indicating that House should give the phone to him. 'She'll believe me', he was mouthing.

"Go find something productive to do," House said, waving him away.

Pulling his hand back, Chase rolled his eyes and started looking around the elevator—hopefully for some kind of life-saving solution.

"What was that?" Cuddy asked from the phone.

"I wasn't talking to you," House said irritably. "But now I am. This elevator is about to go kaput."

He glanced over to Chase, who was studying the metal hospital-issue cane and kept shooting surreptitious looks towards House's wooden one. House tightened his grip on the handle of his cane just in case Chase started getting any funny ideas.

Cuddy sighed. "House, I swear to god, if you're lying to me right now, I'm—"

The elevator groaned.

"Not lying!" House all but yelped.

"All right, all right," Cuddy said in exasperation. "All right, fine. I'll get you out of there as soon as I can. Hang on."

"To what?" House asked, but Cuddy had already hung up. Scowling, House shut the phone and turned to ridicule Chase for being unproductive, only to find him carrying the metal hospital cane over to the doors. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm going to try to pull the doors open," Chase said, setting the cane down on its four legs and running a finger down the seam between the two doors.

"Someone's been watching too much Mission Impossible," House commented.

"If we're close enough to a floor," Chase continued, as if House hadn't spoken, "then we may be able to climb out before it..."

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"And if we're not close enough to a floor?" House finally asked.

"We could try to use the cane to break the fall," Chase said, but House knew that Chase was fully aware of how ridiculous the idea was. If the elevator fell, there would be nothing either one of them could do to save themselves.

The sound of metal screeching against metal echoed ominously, and for a moment, House felt like his insides had turned to ice.

Chase wedged the handle of the cane between the two doors pretty easily, and then he twisted the length of the cane so that he was off to one side. Holding it by the plate to which the four legs were welded, House watched as Chase adjusted his grip, and then pulled. He pulled again. And then once again. The doors, it seemed, had no intention of parting to let them out no matter how much energy Chase was putting into it. House counted three more tried, and then froze as the elevator jolted. It didn't fall, but it jolted. That was more than terrifying.

"Since this is one of those life-or-death situations," House said as Chase tried and failed to get the doors open once more, "I'm going to ask. Do you want help?"

Chase opened his mouth, paused, and seemed to think about it for a second. "Yeah," he said at last. "Use your cane—pull on the other door."

It took a minute for House to find his balance without his cane, but he'd rather take his time than end up on his ass the next time the elevator decided to drop a few inches. The rubber seam between the two doors was about an inch wide, and House thought that he might have to twist it into the crack, but it was a perfect fit. As he wedged it in there, he was suddenly thankful for the fact that he'd opted to get the metal rod in the center. If Wilson hadn't sawed through his cane, he probably would have went with an all-wooden one again, so really, he had Wilson to thank. Maybe if he got out of this alive, he'd thank him. But then again, he was the one—

"House?" Chase said, jolting House out of his musings.

"Waiting for you," House said, glaring down at Chase as if it had been he who had wasted time daydreaming.

"_Right_," Chase said sarcastically, but he gripped the plate. "Pull."

House didn't mention the fact that he was pushing, actually, which probably said something about how afraid he was.

It was like a knife through butter.

Well, not quite. But for all Chase had been struggling, House had thought that their combined strength would have maybe parted the doors an inch. He was therefore surprised when he pushed, Chase pulled, and the doors parted with relative ease. House found himself staring at an ugly cement wall, splotched with calcium deposits and other dried substances that were unidentifiable. A few rusty pipes were running up and down the wall, and cobwebs ran up and down the wall with them. It was, overall, quite an unattractive wall.

"Help me get this one open," Chase said, and House looked down to see that Chase had been right. There was about a foot's worth of the top of the door that opened up into the second floor.

"You're got to be kidding me," House said, staring at the portion of the door in front of them. "Do I look like some kind of Chinese acrobat?"

But Chase paid him no mind, jamming the handle of the cane in between the two doors and getting down on his knees. House studied the situation, trying to figure out the best way for him to help, but he couldn't get down on his knees. If he wasn't able to get down on his knees, he wouldn't be able to reach the door.

"I think I'll sit this one out," House said at last.

Chase, just about to pull on the cane, shook hair out of his eyes and looked up at him. "Can you call—shit!"

The elevator fell another foot.

There was rushing air, a thwack, and then Chase swore violently and the lights went out, but House was too worried about finding his balance to register all that. He had grasped the railing that ran around the cabin and now had no idea where his cane was. The elevator was pitch black.

"Chase?" House said cautiously, reaching out a hand into the darkness.

"Here," Chase said, and his voice sounded oddly thick. "I think I broke my nose, but I'll be fine."

"Get the door open," House said. He could feel it. Whatever had kept the elevator up this long wasn't going to keep it up for very much longer.

He heard Chase inhale and exhale a few times, and then there was a grunt as Chase pulled on the cane. House carefully bent down, keeping one hand on the rail, and felt around for his cane. It couldn't have gone far, and if he could find it, then he might be able to help Chase. His fingers were feeling the bumpy tile surface, but there was nothing on the floor. House stood up and began slowly making his way around the elevator, using his foot to feel for his cane. Step, feel. Step, feel. Step, feel.

The elevator dropped another few inches, and this time, House heard something clatter to his left.

When he was sure that the elevator had gone still for a few seconds, he bent down and snatched up his cane.

"I'm coming," he muttered, and stuck out a hand and started limping over to the the doors (or at least, where he figured the doors would be), but he ended up falling into the wall when the elevator fell a little more. He had also stumbled into Chase, judging by the "_Oof_" that he heard upon impact. "Sorry."

"S'okay," Chase mumbled. "Did you get your cane?"

"Yep," House said as he felt the elevator jolt again, but this time he was braced against the wall—which wasn't moving. Unfortunately, he had to take his hands away to find the crack.

"Ready?" Chase asked.

"No," House snapped. "I'm still working on finding the damn doors."

Then suddenly, a hand grabbed his and brought it down, down to a cool metal surface cloven by an opening, which had a rubber lining on either side. House stuffed the end of his cane into the crack, and it fit as perfectly in between these doors as it had the first ones.

"Ready," House said as the elevator fell another inch or so. His heart skipped a beat. "Pull."

He pushed and Chase pulled, but these doors were harder than the last ones. They weren't budging. House redoubled his efforts, and he could hear Chase's labored breathing nearby, but it wasn't doing any good. His panic rose as he heard metal chains clanking above him, and he threw all of his strength into his cane this time. He heard something snap, but he kept pushing because there was still resistance. He could still get out of this if he kept pushing. The doors would part. They had to, he couldn't die here in number six. He was so close. Too close. There was going to be a way out of this, some miracle that would come in and save his ass at the last second.

His cell phone went off, and Baby Got Back echoed throughout the elevator.

The elevator fell a few more inches.

His cane gave way, and House fell forward onto Chase with a bellow of pain.

And there was blinding white light.

oOo

"House."

His leg felt like a firecracker had been jammed into it, but he was lying on something warm and soft. There was breathing in his ear, Baby Got Back from somewhere else, and voices in the background.

"House, get up. We have to get off of here!" Chase's voice said.

Abruptly, House remembered the elevator. His eyes snapped open and he looked around, only to see that he was laying on Chase and that there were a group of firemen standing in front of the elevator—they must have gotten the doors open. There was only about two and a half feet of a gap between the bottom of the elevator and the ceiling of the second floor. House gave it a split second's thought, and then he rolled off of Chase and gave him a shove.

"What are you doing?" Chase demanded. "You have to get off!"

"I'm going to get off," House said irritably, swallowing as his leg gave a sickening throb. "You're just going to get off first."

The warmth that had been pressed against House's side suddenly receded, and from what he could hear, Chase was sitting up. To get off the elevator, House thought—only Chase reached out and grabbed his hand.

"I'm not the one who's been running from death lately. Get off," Chase said stubbornly.

"You're supposed to keep saving me," House said through gritted teeth. "Can't do that if you're dead."

"I can't save you if I get off first," Chase replied, tugging on his hand.

"Hey!" House shouted to the firemen. "Take the blond! He's injured!"

The elevator shook threateningly, and House swore that his heart stopped beating.

"C'mon," House heard Chase muttered, and then he heard a firefighter instruct Chase to come out feet first.

For a second, relief flooded him. Then Chase let go of his hand and reached over his middle, dragging him towards the opening.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Saving you," Chase said venomously. "So shut up and be grateful."

House found himself being dragged after Chase in a supremely undignified fashion. "Moron!" he hissed at Chase. "You're going to kill us both. Just let go of me and get the hell out of here. Don't be a damn hero. Rambo didn't—"

Someone outside screamed as the elevator dropped a foot.

House suddenly found himself staring face-to-face with Chase, and two hands wrapped themselves around his middle and pulled him into a strange sort of hug.

The elevator dropped another foot.

Chase leaned backwards, and they went falling out of the elevator together, and the bottom of House's stomach dropped out. They were going to fall to the ground, and it was beyond him why he wasn't screaming as they fell through the air—he couldn't scream. The wind had been knocked out of him. He tightened his grip on Chase instinctively and braced for impact, heard someone screaming, and the most horrible sound he'd ever heard—

And then they landed on something soft. Arms. House looked up to find that a few firemen had caught them, breaking their falling. He waited until they were lowered to the ground to speak.

"Idiot," House snarled, pushing himself up off of Chase, who was still looking somewhat dazed. "You almost killed us both."

Chase sat up slowly, reaching up to touch his nose (which, House noted, was streaming blood). "But I didn't. I saved you."

"Yeah. You seem to be doing that a lot," House said spitefully, carefully crawling off of Chase and looking around at the crowd surrounding them. "Jesus Christ. What do we look like, Barnum and Bailey? Someone get me a cane!" And then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of Vicodin.

"I can't help it!" Chase protested. "It's not like I'm _trying _to save you. Half the time, it's just coincidence. Do you think I planned to stand in the way of that basketball?"

"It was a baseball," House reminded him, popping a Vicodin into his mouth and closing the bottle.

Chase glared. "Whatever."

"Maybe it looks—" House stopped and realized how loud he was being, and then lowered his voice. "Maybe it looks like I keep trying to die—I'm not. And I certainly didn't ask for you to be my knight in shining armor."

"I don't want to be your knight in shining armor," Chase said furiously, obviously struggling to keep his voice down.

"So don't be," House said obviously.

Chase's eyes widened. "I can't! I can't help it. If I could, don't you think I'd have handed it off to Cameron by now?"

"Doctors?" a voice said, interrupting their quiet argument.

House looked up to find a middle-aged doctor holding a basic first-aid kit in one hand standing above them. He was flanked by two nurses, each bearing a wheelchair.

"If I can borrow a minute of your time to make sure you're okay?" the doctor—House thought his name was Richard—asked, giving them a sympathetic smile. "I'm sure you both want to be left alone, so I'll make it as quick as I can."

"I need a cane," House said flatly, for he was not going to be doing anything but sitting on his butt until someone came with one. "And he needs some tissues for his nose. And an icepack. I'll take a ham sandwich, too, while you're at it."

Richard paid him no mind, pulling out a penlight and shining it in his eyes. "Can you tell me your name?"

"Cindy Lou Who," House said seriously.

"How about the year?" Richard asked, not at all fazed by House's answer. He pulled out his stethoscope.

"1984," House said, just as seriously, although he did start unbuttoning his shirt for ease of access.

"And the president?" Richard asked, putting the bell up to House's chest.

"Big Brother," House said. He took in a few deep breaths, and when Richard had put the stethoscope away, he brightened. "Excellent. So, I'm clear. How about that cane?"

"Let me check on your friend first, okay?" Richard said, giving him a kindly smile.

House rolled his eyes, disappointed that his cooperation hadn't been rewarded. He sat and watched as Chase was poked and prodded, wishing that he had his cane already so that he could leave. He was sick and tired of being the damsel in distress—and who the hell had chosen _Chase_ to keep saving him? Sure, he and Chase were a lot alike in some respects, and House liked Chase as a doctor for the most part. But really, he didn't need the blond twerp to save his life half a dozen times. It just wasn't necessary. In his opinion (not that anyone had asked), Cuddy would have been a much better choice. Or maybe Carmen Electra.

Richard took his time with Chase's nose, and he finally declared it not broken after several minutes of intense laboring. Then he told Chase to put an icepack on it, and wrote him a scrip for acetaminophen, which made House roll his eyes. Who didn't have a bottle of acetaminophen lying around somewhere? This was a hospital, for crying out loud. You couldn't take two steps without tripping over a bottle of pain meds.

"Well, normally, I'd have to recommend a follow-up therapy session," Richard said as he stood up.

House stared at him in abject horror. _Therapy?_

Richard seemed to catch his expression and smiled. "But this time, I'll make an exception. You both seem fine to me, mentally and physically, so unless you'd like a few days off..." He trailed off and, at their faces, shook his head . "All right then. Now, I trust you both can walk?"

"I need a cane," House groused, scowled up at Richards. He'd been telling him this for nearly ten minutes now, and did he have a cane yet? No. He definitely didn't.

"How about you just ride in the—" one of the nurses began to suggest, but Chase cut her off before House could.

"How about you lean on me?" Chase interrupted, turning to House. "Just until someone comes with a cane."

Despite the fact that they'd just been fighting minutes ago, House was forced to admit that of the two, it was the better option. Much better than being wheeled around by Nurse Betty over there. "Fine," he said grudgingly. "But I still want that ham sandwich."


	3. Day Two, Part Two

**Die Another Day  
Day 2**

_(13:00—24:00)_

House didn't end up getting his ham sandwich. He did get a cane, but not before he had to walk down the hallway with his arm slung over Chase's shoulder, practically falling into him every other step. Following that embarrassing stunt, they were both discharged and told to go home. House had jumped at the idea. Then Chase had reminded him of the fact that the drive home would probably end in his death, and pointed out that at least here in the hospital, House had easy access to doctors, defibrillators, drugs, and other life-saving equipment. Scowling, House had headed back up to his office to find something to do that wouldn't kill him. By that point, he had almost been surprised when the floor hadn't collapsed underneath him.

Sitting down in his chair, he remembered the ham sandwich.

"Dammit," he muttered, glaring at the silver hospital cane hatefully, as though it was the cane's fault that there was no ham sandwich sitting on his desk.

"Got the results," Foreman said as he strode in, Cameron following him closely. "It looks like there's a subdural tumor."

House watched as Foreman stuck an image up on the viewbox and flipped on the switch, displaying a sagittal view of the witch's head. He realized, with no small amount of surprise, that word about his near-death encounter in the elevator hadn't gotten around yet.

"It's digging into that sulcus right there. See?" Foreman said, pointing.

House studied it for a second. "Doesn't explain the mental symptoms."

"Maybe the fortune-telling thing isn't a mental symptom," Cameron suggested. "Maybe she really _has—_" At House's withering look, she changed tactics mid-sentence. "—um, fallacies about psychic powers. That aren't mental symptoms."

"Is is malignant?" House asked.

Foreman raised an eyebrow. "We won't know until we biopsy. I checked—we can't get her in until tomorrow morning."

Squinting at the dark spot on the screen, House was forced admit that the tumor would fit the symptoms, discounting the mental ones. He sighed. "All right. Go put her name on the list and keep her alive in the meantime. And someone go get me a ham sandwich. Put on some coffee, too."

oOo

Number seven came all too soon.

"I think that it's you," House said, rounding the corner.

"Excuse me? You think that it's _my_ fault?" Chase said incredulously. "I keep saving you."

"Exactly," House said, nodding decisively. "Maybe it's you who's supposed to be dying, not me."

"That is seriously twisted logic," Chase said, in an uncanny imitation of Wilson.

House shrugged. "It makes sense. So by all rights, I ought to be avoiding you. Now go away. Get your bad juju away from me."

"But how do you explain the balcony incident?" Chase asked. "I wasn't even there when it fell."

"That's explained very easily," House said. He thought for one... two.. three seconds. "Just not at the moment. Either way, you should stay away from me for a few hours. Think of it as a scientific experiment."

"This is absurd," Chase muttered. He took a long step forward and then spun around so that he was walking backwards in front of House. "Look, I'm telling you that I don't have any kind of radar that lets me know you're in trouble. It's coincidence. Luck. Good timing. However you want to phrase it—I just happen to be in the right place at the right time to save your life."

"A likely story," House said, rolling his eyes. He glanced down and considered using one of the four legs of his cane to trip Chase and make him fall, but he declined. It would probably backfire on him and end up killing him (and boy, was it bizarre to think that in a non-sarcastic way). "If you insist on staying—watch yourself!"

House reached out and grabbed Chase's arm to stop him from sliding, almost falling over himself when Chase grabbed onto his shoulders to steady himself.

There was a pause as Chase stood there, his eyes wide and his lips parted, staring into House's eyes. House could feel his hands still tightly gripping the fabric of his shirt, and his own hand in a vice grip on Chase's arm. He vaguely registered that a few passing people were staring, but he didn't care. Chase had almost fallen. He'd slid on something, probably a puddle of water, and he would have fallen to the ground and—

House had to swallow a rush of bile as he saw what, exactly, was two feet behind Chase.

There was a broken IV pole. It stood two feet off the ground, and the place where it had been broken wasn't a clean cut—it was like a spear. A point rose up on one side, glinting dangerously in the light. If Chase had fallen, that broken pole would have impaled him. If Chase hadn't been walking backwards in front of him, House would have slipped in the puddle of water and fallen onto the pole, and it would have impaled him. Killed him.

_Number seven_.

Abruptly, House realized that he was still clutching Chase's arm at the same moment that Chase seemed to realize that he was still clinging to House, and they both let go. House took a step back, feeling unreasonable embarrassed.

"Sorry," Chase muttered.

"You've had your hands all over me, and you're apologizing now?" House demanded, still rattled. "You've grabbed my hand, hugged me, pulled my arm, had me laying on top of you, and you're apologizing _now?_"

Chase flushed.

"Either way, that was number seven," House said, eyeing the IV pole.

"Number seven?" Chase asked.

House nodded, not taking his eyes off of the object that had almost killed Chase and was supposed to have killed him. "It comes in threes and sevens, right?"

"I thought that was just hospital deaths," Chase said, but at House's scowl, he hastily added, "But I could be wrong."

"So you don't need to be playing Superman anymore. I'm fine," House said, giving him the thumbs-up sign and a bright grin.

Chase didn't look entirely convinced, but after a pause, he exhaled and shook his head. "All right. Are you going home, then?"

For some reason, something about the way Chase had said that was entirely too casual for House's tastes, and he scowled. "Why do you care? Go make sure the witch is still alive. If anyone's going to die in the next few hours, it'll be her."

Chase nodded, and he almost turned around, but his eyes lingered on the IV pole.

"Today, maybe?" House snapped.

Finally, Chase tore his eyes off the slender metal pole and left. House stood there, considering his options, and then he reached out and tipped the IV pole over.

oOo

It started raining around five. Drizzling, really. House scowled at it from the conference room, but he couldn't help taking a little bit of sadistic pleasure from it—he'd been unceremoniously kicked out of his office by some crew or another who were looking at the space on the wall that the balcony used to occupy, probably trying to figure out what the hell had happened. Let it rain. Maybe they'd clear out to wait for it to stop, and House would get his office back.

But as he watched them through narrowed eyes, they made no signs of stopping in their photographing, measuring and note-taking.

This did not serve to improve his mood.

The fact that he hadn't seen his team in two hours wasn't helping things, either.

What he needed, House finally decided after nearly twenty minutes of stewing and glaring, was a cup of coffee. A nice, hot cup of coffee to counter the thunderstorm that was now alive and kicking, with rain lashing at the windows of the conference room and thunder cracking overhead. This morning, he would have been dead terrified of making a cup of coffee, especially without Chase around to save his ass, but now it barely crossed his mind to be wary. He'd lived through his seven close encounters, and now he was safe.

Safe.

Yeah, he was safe. Especially after he managed to start a pot of coffee without almost dying once.

The question that was really burning on his mind, House decided as he flicked the switch that turned on the coffee pot, was _why Chase?_ What fate had decided that Chase would be his knight in shining armor? Out of all the people in the world that House would trust with his life, Chase was ranked pretty low on the list. It was nothing personal—Chase was a good doctor, but what he lacked was any life-saving training beyond a hospital. These last seven mishaps had just been sheer luck on both of their parts. Actually, it was kind of strange the way that luck kept intervening at the last second. If House was a superstitious person, and he was not, he might think that there was some sort of conflict between two forces, wherein one wanted him dead and the other, alive.

But again, he was not a superstitious person. The idea of fates or spirits or whatever the fuck dueled over people's lives like this was absolutely ridiculous.

Whatever it was, Chase seemed to have gotten the idea that the two of them had some kind of _bond_ now. He supposed that it was better than the whole Chinese line of thought, but nonetheless, there was no sort of connection between them. None.

Although... With the right words and some good timing, he could have a little fun with this.

oOo

He made Chase stay after the next check-in. It had been difficult, because the news of their near-death encounter with the elevator had finally made its way around the hospital and even Foreman was curious about the details—to say nothing of Cameron's persistence—but House eventually managed to shove them out the door. Of course, this brought about the idea that he was making Chase stay under the guise of wanting to talk, when all he really wanted to do was give him an escape from Cameron. This was very much untrue, and House was quick to debunk it.

"I'm not saving you from Cameron," he said as soon as the door had shut.

"I wouldn't dream of thinking you so considerate," Chase said dryly.

House squinted out the window, but the sun had set and he could officially no longer see if there were still little police ants swarming his balcony. "I've decided to repay you for your life-saving goodliness."

Chase blinked. He turned around in his chair to stare at House suspiciously. "I've told you before, I haven't even been _trying_ to save—"

"Doesn't matter," House said, interrupting him. The red light on the coffee pot suddenly went off, signaling that the coffee was done. "Excellent. Coffee. Want some?"

Now Chase looked like he wasn't sure if he'd stepped into the twilight zone. "Uh... Sure."

"Good. Get up and get it," House said as he made his way over to the counter. He opened the cabinet and started rooting around for a clean cup.

Behind him, he heard Chase getting up out of his chair.

"Anyway," House said. "I've decided to repay you."

Chase came up from behind him and instead of waiting for House to finish, came and stood next to him. He reached past House to get into the cabinet, looking for a clean mug of his own. "How's that?"

"Free blowjob," House said, just when Chase had finally picked up a clean glass, for maximum effect.

But Chase didn't bat an eye. "Can I collect on that today?"

"Sure," House said, before he could even think about it.

"Are you sure that you want to?" Chase asked.

Chase set his cup down on the counter and reached over for the coffee pot, and House thought about snatching the pot away before Chase could get to it. He decided to watch instead.

"Yes. What time?"

"We could go now, if you want," Chase offered.

House pointed to the coffee pot. "I want my caffeine fix first."

Chase nodded as he poured his own cup of coffee. "Sounds good."

The plan hadn't exactly gone like he'd wanted it to. Chase was supposed to have gotten nervous, or at least been faintly amused by the idea, not go along with it. That was House himself would have done it, and none of his ducklings were allowed to steal his strategies. Unless... Unless Chase wasn't being facetious. That would be bad. Replaying the conversation in his head, House frantically tried to decide whether Chase was bluffing or really intended to take him up on the offer. He sounded serious, of course, but that was all part of being facetious, and if he _was_ being serious, then that was a major problem because he had no intentions of actually following—

There was a slurping sound as Chase sipped his coffee, which startled House out of his thoughts. Their eyes locked for a split second, and then Chase's face split into a grin that cracked the tension in the air, allowing House to look away.

Chase wasn't being serious. Thank god.

"One of these days," House warned as he finally reached over to get his own coffee, "I'm going to call your bluff."

Chase raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure that's the only bluff you'd be calling?"

House gave him a sidelong glance, expression unamused.

"Mm," Chase said as he swallowed another sip of his coffee. "Too bitter. Pass me the creamer, would you?"

"No."

"You weren't really going to give me a blowjob, were you?"

Going for ambiguity, House shrugged. "You weren't really going to _let_ me give you a blowjob, were you?"

Quite suddenly, Chase's hand came out in front of him, accidentally (purposely) brushing his neck as he reached for the creamer.

House fought the urge to swallow.

Chase shifted closer, reaching for the far bottle of creamer, and House swallowed before he could stop himself. Shit. Shit, shi—

oOo

House stormed into the room, scowling at the woman who lay on the bed. He reached over to turn on the lights, furious enough to take some pleasure in her pained wince.

"All right. I've had it with you."

The witch blinked rapidly, looking up to him in confusion. "Wha—You're not dead?"

"Not for lack of trying!" House half-shouted, rounding the corner of her bed and coming to stand at the side of her bed. "I'm sick and tired of you playing with your little voodoo dolls and trying to kill me. Not only is it annoying, but it just ruined a perfectly good moment of sexual tension. Stop it."

"You've been evading it?" the woman—dammit, what was her name—asked, her blinking slowing as she adjusted to the lights. "For two days?"

"Yes," House said irritably.

"I said three," she whispered, looking down at the sheets.

House wanted to strangle her. "Make it stop! I just had a coffee pot _explode_ on me! And that's the third time Chase has been hurt saving me—he's going to be dead before me at this rate."

But the woman shook her head slightly, staring down at the sheets still. "I can't. I can't make it stop. I didn't make it start. I just know... I know that it's going to happen. I'm sorry."

"Dammit," House swore, tilting his head to stare up at the ceiling. "Dammit. Why can't it come in threes and sevens?"

"I'm sorry," the woman said again.

The annoying thing was, she really did sound apologetic.

"Oh, shut up," he said, looking down at her. "What am I supposed to do about it?"

The witch shook her head. "You can't. We all have to die at some time or another, Dr. House."

House narrowed his eyes and tried to find something suspicious about that sentence, but when he couldn't think of anything, he turned on his heel and left the room. He left the lights on, not sure if it was to piss off the witch, the nurse who would have to turn them back off, or the hospital itself.

oOo

The mood was heavy as after House's announcement that there was nothing they could do for the witch overnight. They'd already known that, of course, because they had to wait for the biopsy in morning to determine whether it was benign or malignant, but it was still a little depressing when House told them all to go home. House was personally hoping that the woman would die tonight, taking her stupid death curse with her, because he'd just about had it with almost dying left and right. The monster of a thunderstorm outside was only fueling his mood. Thunderclaps shook the floors of the hospital, the lights flickering once or twice, and the idea of taking the stairs was almost preferable to the elevators (especially with his track record, and especially after this morning's episode). But no. He had his damn leg to thank for the shaky ride down the elevator shaft.

He was amazed that it didn't stall out again. He gave Chase a thumbs up as the doors parted to reveal the first floor, and Chase grinned back at him.

"I've half a mind to follow you home, just to make sure you don't get into a car wreck or something," Chase said as they stepped off.

"You just want to get into my bed," House said, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

Chase rolled his eyes. "I couldn't possibly be worried about your safety. Job security. Crazy things like that."

They came up to the doors, where the darkness of the storm nearly blacked out the streetlights. House knew that he was going to have a hell of a time finding his car in this mess. To his right, he heard Chase take in a deep breath in preparation for the freezing rain that was about to pelt him, and before House knew it, he was doing the same.

He pushed open the door, bent his head down and left Chase behind in the dust.

Rain smacked him on one side, and if he hadn't already been walking forward so purposely, if probably would have knocked him over. He sucked in a breath, feeling the ground tremble as another clap of thunder boomed. This was the kind of storm that had sent him diving under the covers, pressing his face into his pillow so that no one would hear him crying when he'd been seven or eight. The rain was pounding down relentlessly, and it almost felt like a never-ending wave that kept crashing over him, drowning him, beating him down...

But on the bright side, he'd driven the 'Vette yesterday. The motorcycle would have made going home a no-go. Also, the was less of a risk of death in the Corvette as opposed to the bike. If he'd rode the bike that morning, he'd either have to stay another night at the hospital or ask someone for a ride home—and as today was Wilson's day off, that meant that he'd have probably had to have asked Chase. And House had had his fill of Chase. As soon as these three days passed, he was going to make sure that Chase held no illusions about bonds of friendship or something like that. He could forget all about his marathon with death and go back to living his life in peace, where he knew that at least death wouldn't be coming for him for a few years when his liver finally gave out.

Which brought up several questions that he didn't particularly feel like thinking about at the moment. Like, did he really want to die? What would it be like to die from liver failure? Would anyone try to save him, or would they let him rot in his own poison?

But he didn't want to think about those questions at this particular moment. Or ever.

Lightning flashed, and thunder did not immediately follow it. That meant that it was going to be a big one. It was building—House could practically feel the tension gathering up in the air, in the gap of silence filled only with the patter of rain as thousands of people held their breath, waiting for it the crack of thunder to—

"House!"

The voice came distantly. House was half-sure that he'd imagined.

"_House!_" The scream was desperate, and before House knew what was happening, something caught him and pulled him backwards so fast that he nearly lost his grip on his cane.

"What the he—get off of me!" House shouted, struggling furiously against his captor. "What the f—"

An almighty crash cut off the rest of his words, and suddenly, the ground rocked and he was clinging to the person instead of fighting them. His ears rang, and another streak of lightning shot across the sky, revealing a giant wooden pole two feet in front of him and...

"Are you kidding me?" House demanded, pushing himself away from Chase. "How the hell did you even see that coming?"

Chase pushed locks of sopping hair out of his face, and another flash of lightning illuminated his face. "Lightning struck it. I saw the cables spark and drop away."

Looking around, House noticed for the first time that the streetlights were out. All the lights around the hospital were out—only a few dim lights from the emergency generators could be seen, and they were like candles in this storm.

"Power's out," Chase said observantly.

House wanted to make some sort of scathing remark that involved the likes of Captain Obvious, but he was still slightly shook up from his ninth near-death experience. He'd almost been crushed by a telephone pole. He wasn't sure if he should start laughing or if he should hide, because at this rate, he wasn't going to survive the trip home. Jesus Christ. _A falling telephone pole._

He glanced over his shoulder at the prone wooden pole, and then looked at Chase. "Maybe I'd better take you home with me."

Chase shrugged.

"Great!" House said with a brightness he couldn't bring himself to feel. He turned around, only to be faced with the gigantic telephone pole in his way. There was no way he was going to be able to step over it—he'd have to go around, which would mean going on the muddy grass, which would not only mean getting his sneakers dirty, but also that there was a seriously increased risk of slipping. And so he could either risk it, or ask Chase for help getting around it.

He'd risk it.

House tightened his grip on his cane and started walking off towards the grass.

"House, that's a swamp over there!" Chase shouted above the storm.

"No shit, Sherlock," House snapped as he took another cautious step forward. "Unless you want to carry me over the threshold, it's the only way out to the parking lot."

"Look, why don't we just go back and take another path?" Chase asked, but even as House heard the words, he felt a hand grip his elbow.

"Go away," he said, trying to wrench his arm free.

"For a genius, you've got to be the stupidest man I've ever met," Chase muttered, tightening his grip and the mud thickened. House's feet were freezing. "I swear, if you're not running from death then you're welcoming it with open arms."

"Quit being a mother hen," House said, fed up with the lecture before Chase could even really start it.

They'd reached the end of the pole and turned left, and even though House would never admit to it, he did almost lose his footing once or twice. He blamed Chase, of course, and Chase agreed, in a suspiciously amiable tone of voice, that it was absolutely his fault. If the rain had been a little quieter, House would have called his tone facetious—but as it was, it was too loud to make a fair judgment.

"Wilson says my couch is comfy," House said conversationally as they finally made it back onto the pavement.

"Where'd you park?" Chase asked, squinting out into the parking lot.

House pointed in the vague direction of the parking lot. "Handicap spot. Don't ask me which one. And no, you can't drive it."

Chase muttered something under his breath that House couldn't catch.

"Onward!" House shouted, raising his hand high in the air to point in the right direction.

There was a flash of lightning and an almighty crack of thunder that was louder than anything he'd ever heard, making his teeth rattle and his insides clench.

Yeah. That wasn't ominous or anything.


	4. Day Three

**Die Another Day**

**Day 3**

Chase stood there, dripping wet and shivering, while House squelched his way across the floor to grab a change of clothes before he developed hypothermia. He supposed that he should have offered Chase a new set of clothes, too, before he'd disappeared, but he was already back in his room so the point was moot. Chase could wait until he'd gotten comfortably dry—it wasn't like it was likely _he_ was going to die in the next fifteen minutes. That was House's role.

He picked up a t-shirt and a pair of pajama pants, balled them up in one hand, and then limped out of his bedroom. As he passed through the hallway, he snuck a glance at Chase. Out in the rain, Chase had bore a striking resemblance to a drowned kitted, but now that he was inside House's apartment, there was no denying that he looked pretty damn sexy. Actually, he looked like he'd just stepped out of an erotic magazine, with his wet clothes clinging tightly to his body, his hair dripping wet but somehow not plastered to his skull, and the rivulets of water that were falling down his face and neck. The confident, sexy expression was missing and had been replaced with a half-miserable, half-curious look as Chase took in the apartment, but it made no real difference.

Abruptly, House realized that he'd been standing there staring long enough to have dripped enough water to form a veritable pond on his hardwood floors, and he quickly disappeared into the bathroom.

Changing his clothes was trickier than usual because of all the water, but House managed to do it all without falling once (and that was a very good thing, because with this whole death curse thing, he'd have probably cracked his head open on the bathroom tile and died). He threw his wet clothes in the tub and grabbed another towel as he left the bathroom, laying it on the wet spot so that later, when he'd forgotten about it, he wouldn't fall and die there, either.

"You wanna stop making death traps over there?" he said rather irritably to Chase, who turned and looked at him in confusion. House lifted up his cane. "This doesn't mix well with puddles. Go dry off, take some of my clothes."

Chase, looking incredibly relieved, mumbled his thanks and made his way down to House's bedroom, his sneakers squeaking all the way.

"And don't take any of my vintage t-shirts!" House called after him.

He heard drawers opening, but there was no response. If Chase knew what was good for him, he'd steer clear of them.

This settled, House made his way into the kitchen, eyes watching the floor for puddles of water. After all this almost-dying stuff, the only thing that he wanted to do tonight was get stone cold drunk. Stone. Cold. Drunk. Not slowly, either, but with whiskeys of 150 proof and shots of Sky Vodka. However, as the falling telephone pole had proved, this almost-dying stuff was far from over and the alcohol would probably send him to his grave tonight. If not from alcohol poisoning, then he'd drown in his own vomit or something.

So instead of alcohol (which he did give a long mournful look before he passed it by), House picked up a blue can of Hawaiian Punch and a bag of pretzels to go with it. Mentally, he scrolled through channels and tried to remember which shows were on right now, but the only ones he could remember were _Pinky and the Brain_, _Designed to Sell_ and _Whose Line Is It Anyway?_ The latter would do, and if they sucked tonight, then he'd take _Pinky and the Brain_.

"Hey, House!" Chase's shout came from the bathroom. "D'you have any gauze?"

"Gauze?" House muttered, frowning in the direction of the bathroom. Raising his voice, he yelled back, "What do you need gauze for? Did your stitches tear?"

The thought of Chase lying on his bathroom floor bleeding to death got him moving before he even heard Chase's response. They better not have torn—he'd wanted to do them himself, but Chase had been curtained off and House hadn't been able to get in a word edgewise, thanks to nurse Brenda's subsequent interrogation. And those stitches were technically his fault, since it was his death curse that had made the coffee pot explode. If Chase was going to die on his bathroom floor tonight, he at least needed it not to be his fault.

"No! It's just that the gauze they..." Chase trailed off as he noticed that House was standing in the doorway, and thus, he no longer needed to shout. He held up his arm, displaying limp, soggy gauze that had nearly fallen off. "It got wet."

"I see that," House said.

What he also saw was that Chase had no shirt on.

Not that it mattered.

"Gauze," Chase said, reminding House of where he was.

"I have an Ace bandage," House said after a second of running through his first-aid inventory. Who the hell kept gauze in their home anyway?

Chase rolled his eyes. "That'll work. Could you go and get it for me?"

House let out a long-suffering sigh and cast his eyes heavenward. "You know, we wouldn't have this problem if you'd done like I told you and stopped saving me."

"It wasn't intentional!" Chase protested. "The coffee pot just happened to explode when my arm was in front of your neck. I didn't _plan_ on being the only thing between the piece of glass and your jugular. It just happened!"

"Excuses, excuses," House said disapprovingly, but he left to go get the Ace bandage all the same. Halfway down the hallway, he stopped. "And change into some dry clothes already!"

oOo

"—never again, even if it means falling and cracking my head open and dying on the floor of the bathroom—"

"—I said I'm sorry! I didn't know—"

"—could've warned me—"

"—talking in my sleep, anyway, when you're over there sawing logs for half the night—"

"—obviously not loud enough! You still fell asleep!"

"There is no way my talking woke you up. It was probably your own snoring."

House scowled. "It was _not_."

"Was too," Chase said.

"You kept me up all night—and then you didn't even make breakfast properly!" House moaned.

Chase stopped and stared at House. "I made eggs. What's wrong with eggs?"

"Pan-cakes," House said slowly, as though trying to teach Chase to speak without a lisp. "Pancakes."

"That's Wilson's thing," Chase said. "And besides, you don't have the ingredients and I wasn't going grocery shopping for you."

"Why not?" House asked.

"Because that would involve leaving you alone for an hour. I'd come back and find you dead," Chase said, clearly a minute away from an eye-roll.

House glared again, brushing past the fact that Chase had a fair point. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"

"That's what we were working on before we got off about your snoring and my sleep talking," Chase reminded him.

House glanced at the Corvette. "Well, go on. Get in. Haven't got all day to go save the witch."

He made his way over to the driver's side, feeling fairly confident. Since the telephone pole incident, he'd had no near-death experience. Driving had been fine, sleeping had been fine, showing in the morning had been fine—he'd even eaten without choking and dying. Today was day number three, after all. Maybe she'd just meant that it was last up _until _three days, not _for _three days. God, he hoped so. Then he could stop having to worry about dying every other minu—

"Hey House?"

Gritting his teeth in irritation, House glanced over to find that Chase hadn't even gotten in the car yet.

"What are you doing?"

"We're not going to be taking the 'Vette today," Chase said cryptically.

House sighed and pushed his door open, climbing out to see what the problem was.

Chase was on the other side of the car, bent over and staring at something underneath the car. House would never be able to bend like that with his leg and still keep his balance, so he was forced to ask what the problem was. If there was one, that was.

"Your gas line's leaking," Chase said, when House asked.

Ah. Another death, foiled by Chase.

"If you would have started the car, we'd have been history," Chase said, like this wasn't already obvious. "Either way, you've got to get that fixed before you can take it anywhere."

"Yeah, I know," House snapped, staring down at the Corvette. _Fuck_. Did it have to be his car? His Corvette? Should he survive that long, that was going to be a bitch to pay for, and he was probably going to lose all the fuel in his tank, too. Dammit, dammit, dammit. All the other incidents hadn't been so bad because they'd only damaged hospital property, but this was personal.

Also, this meant that his death curse was going to last _for_ three days, not just up until. Which was freaking spectacular.

"So I, uh... I guess we're taking your bike," Chase said hesitantly, as though he was afraid that House would start berating him for making such an idiotic assumption.

And House would have, make no mistake, if it had been an idiotic assumption—but it was not. It was true. They would have to take the bike up to the hospital today, despite the fact that his chances of dying went up significantly.

"Yep," he said, turning around and walking back to where his bike was parked. Behind him, he heard Chase stand up and follow him, running slightly to catch up. "Go inside and get my helmet."

As he passed by his apartment, Chase's footsteps took a left and went up the stairs and then faded away. House stopped in front of his motorcycle and squinted, looking for leaking gas lines or something of that like. There didn't appear to be anything wrong with it. But then again, it was always Chase who saved his butt so he'd let Blondie take a look over it before they rode off, just to be safe. It wouldn't do to die right now, when he was so close to making it through this marathon—and it wouldn't do to take Chase down with him.

There was the sound of a door slamming, and Chase came up beside him a second later. The helmet was thrust at him.

"It's not for me," House said, pulling out his keys.

Chase blinked, withdrawing the helmet. "You're not driving. And you're wearing the helmet."

"Of course I'm driving," House said as he began turning through his keys, looking for the one for his bike.

"You're an idiot," Chase said incredulously. "If you drive, you'll kill us both. You're trying to survive a death curse here."

"It's my bike!" House said indignantly.

"Yeah, and it's your life," Chase told him, pushing the helmet at him again. "Which one would you rather have?"

"The bike. You're not driving—you don't even have your license," House pointed out.

"I've driven a motorcycle before, and I'm pretty sure that I can do it well enough to get us to the hospital without getting us pulled over," Chase said dryly. "It's a fifteen minute drive."

"Twenty," House said.

"Twenty," Chase repeated, rolling his eyes. "Now give me the keys."

"If you think that just because you've saved my life a dozen times over the last two days, you have the right to—"

"I'm trying to save your life right now," Chase said through gritted teeth. "If you'd pull your head out of your ass for a minute, maybe you'd realize that."

Frustrated, House shoved the keys back into his pocket. "Fine. We'll take the bus."

"The nearest stop is three blocks from here," Chase pointed out. He raised his eyebrows at House's cane. "Not that that would be a problem for you or anything."

Chase was right. He was fighting a losing battle, but goddammit, he was not going to go down without a fight.

House scowled. "You can drive if you wear the helmet," he said finally. If it weren't for the fact that there was a serious risk of him dying on the way to the hospital, there was no way he'd be doing this. Fucking death curse.

"Are you insane?" Chase said, his face incredulous. Again. "The chances of dying in an accident on a motorcycle increase by—"

"And that's why you'll be wearing the helmet," House said, smoothly interrupting him. "How are you supposed to save me if you're a vegetable? Put the damn thing on and let's go."

Chase was supposed to have fought back. They were supposed to have wasted several more minutes arguing, going back and forth about who would drive and who would wear the helmet and so on and so forth, which would have meant that eventually they would have given up and, at House's suggesting, called Wilson for a ride. And if that fell through, they would take the bus.

What wasn't supposed to happen was Chase agreeing with him off the bat.

"Fine," Chase said, rolling his eyes. He held out a hand. "Keys?"

House blinked, taken aback by Chase's prompt response. "You're not supposed to agree!" he protested, when he finally came back to his senses.

"But I did. House, I'm not emasculating you—it's a damn ride to work. Just give me the keys," Chase said, wiggling his fingers in a 'gimmie' motion.

Grumbling, House pulled out the keys and tossed them to Chase, who caught them with a grin.

"Which one is it?"

"Orange one," House said, leaning down and sticking his cane to the little clip that he'd installed for it. When he stood back up, Chase had put the helmet over his head and had found the right key. There was a wicked grin on his face.

House stepped back, allowing Chase to get on, and then he climbed on himself with a well-practiced motion. Wrapping his arms securely around Chase (because it wouldn't do to die by falling off of a motorcycle before they even got up to high, exciting speeds), House leaned forward and watched to make sure that Chase knew what he was doing. Life-saving or not, this was his motorcycle.

But Chase managed to start it up just fine. They were zooming off down the road, and House took the moment to discover what it felt like to be riding his bike instead of driving it. He was pretty sure that he preferred driving. For one thing, Chase wasn't taking the same route that he did to get back to the hospital and that was just weird. But there was no point in trying to tell Chase to take the way that _he_ did, because there was no way that he'd be able to shout directions above the roaring wind, so he sat back and tried to enjoy the ride instead.

Wilson was working today. In fact, he was probably already in and had heard all the spectacular (slightly embellished) stories of all of House's misadventures yesterday. The power was probably back up now, but at least no one but Chase had seen the pole almost hit him, otherwise the rumor mill might have imploded from sheer overflow. It was a shame that he wouldn't get to see Wilson's face when he found out what had been going on, though. And it wasn't like he had anything to brag about with Chase, either, because they hadn't _done_ anything yet, and that would just mean Wilson walking around with that annoying, arrogant smirk on his face for a few days.

Abruptly, House noticed that they were veering off to the left and rapidly losing speed.

"What are you doing?" he shouted, and he felt Chase start and the bike immediately jerked back to the center of the lane. They started speeding up, but before House could demand that Chase pull over, they were already coasting into the parking lot of a Denny's.

They rolled to a stop, and Chase put his feet on the ground.

"What are you doing?" House demanded again. "What the hell is wrong with you? Are you _trying_ to kill me?"

Chase's hands were pushing up on the helmet clumsily, like he was drunk, and having no effect on it whatsoever.

House reached out and pulled it up off his head, roughly, and then opened his mouth to continue his tirade, but Chase started mumbling incoherently.

"Speak up, I'm old," House snapped, but he leaned closer and tried to hear what Chase was saying.

"Dizzy," Chase said, with obvious effort. "Dizzy, dizzy, dizzy..."

Now alarmed, House grabbed Chase by the shoulders and turned him so that he could see his face.

Chase was clearly on the brink of passing out. His eyes kept fluttering shut, his head nodding forward, and he seemed completely out of it. His lips were still moving, but the words were slurred and too quiet to hear above the racket of the city anyway. He nodded off twice, three times, and then his eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and he slumped into unconsciousness.

oOo

Riding a bike with an unconscious person on it looked a hell of a lot easier in the movies. Chase's head kept lolling back and forth, getting in House's way, and his body seemed to constantly be sliding to the right, making it nearly impossibly to steer. House had to lean forward, both for better control over the bike and to make it more difficult for Chase to fall off, and it was extremely uncomfortable. He was sitting on the slight bump that rose up between the driver's seat and the passenger's seat, but however slight it may have been, he felt it with every pothole they hit.

He was actually kind of hoping a cop would pull him over, as this was a medical emergency and he'd probably get an escort to the hospital instead of a ticket. That would be kind of cool. The one thing he was trying to avoid, though, was an accident. Even though he was now wearing the helmet, there wasn't a high likelihood of him surviving a crash—and even less so, for Chase. There was a fine line between reckless driving and suicidal driving, and House was walking down it with more care than he had ever before. He was counting the streets until they reached the hospital. There were only two left, just two streets and then he'd pull up to the emergency room and figure out what the hell had happened to Chase.

One street. Just one more street, and they were gold.

House twisted his hand forward, heard the engine squeal and felt himself jerk backwards, and they were rocketing down the street. Cars honked and he sailed through a light just as it turned red, but then a second later, he braked and turned sharply into PPTH's parking lot.

"Hey!" House yelled as he came up to the ER ambulance bay. "Anybody out here?"

He brought the motorcycle to a stop and quickly grabbed Chase around the middle before he slid off.

A nurse in purple scrubs appeared. "Use the front entrance, just—"

"I work here," House interrupted, pulling Chase upright again. "Dr. House. Nice to meet you. My good coworker Dr. Chase has taken a mysterious leave of consciousness and would like some help."

"You'll have to take him through the front to be triaged, and then—"

"Does it look like I can _carry_ him?" House demanded, pulling his cane off its clip and holding it up in the air.

She paused, obviously thinking to herself, and then nodded. "I'll get a stretcher out here right away."

oOo

Wilson sat with him while he waited. He didn't ask questions or give him pointed looks—he just walked in and sat down in the chair next to him. This made House wonder how he'd known that Chase was in the ER and that House would be down here, waiting for an update on Chase's condition as well as the results of the CT scan the ER staff had elected to give him, but it didn't really matter. He appreciated Wilson's silence, and the last thing he wanted to do was explain himself,t how Wilson had known gave his mind something to latch onto besides Chase. At least for a few minutes.

He couldn't figure it out. Had Chase taken something this morning? House had medicine in his bathroom, but he couldn't remember any of it being stronger than Benadryl—which would make sense, sort of, except for the fact that Chase had muttered something about dizzy and nauseous, and that Benadryl was only supposed to make you drowsy, not knock you into unconsciousness. Unless... Unless it had been an allergic reaction?

But Chase was almost thirty years old. He'd have probably figured out by now what he was allergic to.

And why would Chase have taken Benadryl before going to work, anyway? He really wasn't _that_ stupid.

House supposed that Chase could have accidentally overdosed. If not on Benadryl, then on some other medication in the cabinet. Maybe he'd been half-asleep or something, thought he'd grabbed one thing and accidentally grabbed something far more potent... Possible. Not probable, but possible.

"Is this your new hideout?"

House looked up to find Foreman standing in front of him, Cameron right behind him. There was a file in his hands.

"What do you want?" House asked, trying to glare at Foreman but not quite able to manage it.

Foreman held up a file folder. "We got the biopsy results. I thought you might want to see them."

Biopsy. Witch.

Right.

House pushed Chase out of his mind and held out a hand to accept the file.

"Chase hasn't come in yet," Cameron said suddenly.

Nodding, House opened the file. "He called in sick today," he said, unable to think of a better excuse off the top of his head—and who really cared, anyway? He didn't need to give them an explanation. He was their boss.

As he looked over the results, he ignored the fact that Cameron and Foreman were looking at him as though he'd just asked if they were up for a game of basketball.

"House..." Wilson said quietly.

Undoubtedly, that would be Wilson, trying to encourage him to be honest.

"Not now."

"House, the doctor's coming," Wilson said, keeping his voice low.

Oh.

House looked up to see an ER doc walking their way, a file folder in his hand. He quickly told Cameron and Foreman to scat, sending them off to go schedule the witch's brain surgery, and almost told Wilson the same, but thought better of it. Wilson would have refused anyway.

"Dr. House?" the ER doctor asked as he came up to them.

House nodded. "Just get to the gory stuff."

The man sighed, opening the file. "Robert has a large contusion in the posterior skull. It looks like he received a traumatic blow to the head about a day or two ago, and the pressure's been building for a while. We'll have to get him into surgery as soon as possible to relieve that, and if that goes well, then we'll worry about lasting effects. Right now, we're going to worry about keeping him stable." He held out the folder for House to look at.

All the blood had left House's face.

The baseball.

_Lasting effects_. Brain damage. Coma. Death.

Death.

"Shit," House muttered.

"The prognosis isn't necessarily bad, Dr. House," the ER doctor assured him, wrongly assuming that House was swearing at hearing the bad news (although he was, only indirectly). "As I'm sure you know, the technology we have at our fingertips today can work miracles that would—"

"I know that," House snapped, cutting him off.

Looking startled and vaguely affronted, the ER doctor didn't say anything more.

"Cuddy should—" Wilson started, but House wasn't interested in hearing about Cuddy.

"Page me with updates," House said. He reached into Wilson's lab coat pocked and pulled out a pen, stood up, and scribbled his pager number on the ER doctor's hand before he could yank it away. "Anything and everything. Particularly everything."

Now looking irritated, the man nodded and withdrew his hand to look at the number.

House glanced at Wilson, and then turned around and walked away, the witch's biopsy results still in his hand.

She was going to _pay_ for this.

oOo

The witch—she didn't even look like a witch, really, but House couldn't think of her as anything but—was awake when he came in. He glared at her, and has he passed the end of her bed, he picked up her chart and studied it. He stopped at her bedside, hooked his cane around one of the bed rails, and then slid the biopsy results underneath all the other documents in her chart.

"You're going to die," House said dully.

She blinked, frowning up at him. "But I—"

"And if you want me to save your life," House continued in the same flat tone, "then you'll explain this death curse. And then you'll take it off. Deal?"

"I can't take it off," the witch insisted, her voice pleading for him to understand. "Please. I didn't put any kind of curse on you. I never said that you were cursed. I only predicted your death, and I can't help it."

House gave her an unamused look. "You predicted wrong. Dr. Chase is lying in the ER, bleeding into his brain right now—want to tell me why that is?"

"Oh my god," she said, staring up at him in horror. "He's going to die? And—and not you?"

"Yeah," House said shortly. "This is where you come in. If Chase dies today, so do you—save his life, and I save your life. See how that works?"

"But then you die," the witch said, now looking at him in confusion.

House blinked. "What?"

"Someone has to die," the witch said, like he was supposed to know this. "Death has to take what was promised."

"This is ridiculous," House muttered. This woman was talking about death like it was a grim reaper that came walking through the door, scythe bared and a list of people it was supposed to take for the day. In a louder voice, he said, "So why is Chase the one dying?"

"Maybe..." The witch offered a weak smile. "Death got impatient?"

"Not funny," House reminded her.

The smile disappeared. "I'm sorry. I don't know. I've never seen it act like this before."

House wondered how often, exactly, she predicted people's deaths.

He thought back on the conversation, piecing information together. She claimed there was no curse, just her prediction, but she also said that death may have... changed courses, as ridiculous as it was to think of death as something that actually could change courses. It needed to be paid or something like that. And that meant...

"So what you're telling me," House said, very careful to keep emotion out of his voice, "is that either Chase or I have to die today?"

The witch was still for a minute, and then slowly nodded her head. "Yeah. Yeah, that's right."

House felt something in the bottom of his stomach go cold.

oOo

_Robert stable, surg in 45_

_where is he?_

_moved him to GS178_

oOo

_pt surg in 1 hr_

_srsly?_

_someone cancelled, pulled strings_

oOo

House was running a hand through Chase's hair.

Not that he would admit to it if anyone saw him—he could and would just pass it off as feeling his forehead for a fever—but it gave his hand something to do, and it also made him feel a bit better. Strangely. He highly doubted that anyone would see him like this, as no one but Wilson knew about Chase, and even he didn't know where they had moved him to for surgical prep. And Chase's bed had been curtained off anyway, giving him privacy from the rest of the nosy idiots in the hospital. So he could very well stand here and run his hand through Chase's hair if he wanted to.

They would have to shave it off.

Chase's hair was incredibly soft. House had never realized. It wasn't hardened or brittled with years of dye and gel and spray, and House found it almost funny now that all those jokes he'd made about bottle blonds really had been wrong. Chase had been serious—he really _didn't_ do anything to his hair to make it look that good. It was just natural. But did that mean that he took it for granted? Or did he really not care about how his hair looked?

House was hoping that it would be the latter. When—if—_when _Chase woke up after the surgery, he was really hoping that Chase would say that he could care less about his hair, in part because House was sure that the last thing anyone wanted to hear was Chase whinge on about was his hair, and in part because House felt responsible for getting him into this mess. Logically, he knew that it was really no one's fault except the witch's, but it had been the baseball intended for him that had hit Chase—and more than that, it had been he who had sent Chase back to work with no neurological exam whatsoever. Dammit, he should have known that. Even preschool mothers knew that.

But he hadn't. He's just up and told Chase to get back to work, and then had probably worked him too hard to allow him time to get a neurological exam—if he'd had an ounce of consideration for his employees, just for once, then it still would only be him who had to die. He wouldn't be standing here like a gay lover, running his hand through Chase's hair and feeling like the world was about to fall out under him. He wouldn't be playing along with this stupid death game, telling himself that unless he died in the next forty-five minutes, Chase would die on the table. Even in unconsciousness, there was still color in his face that wouldn't be there if he died. House tried to picture Chase's face gone utterly white, dead—because dead skin had a look to it, a certain texture of a hue that he knew but couldn't picture—but he couldn't. Didn't want to.

He wouldn't have to, because Chase was going to wake up after that surgery and be absolutely fine.

Pointlessly, House wondered why it had been him. Why had it had been Chase who had to constantly save him? He hadn't controlled that. He hadn't even wanted Chase to save him—why couldn't it have been Wilson?

But then it would be Wilson laying here, about to go into the surgery that would lead to his death, and House wasn't sure if that was better or worse. What if it had been Cameron who had saved him over and over for the last few days? Cuddy? Some random person he'd never seen before?

"Dammit," House sighed, finally lifting his hand away from Chase. The golden hair was mussed now, splayed out in odd directions, and he looked away before he could start comparing it to a halo or something equally ridiculous.

For a moment, House wondered what would happen if he didn't die during Chase's surgery. What if Chase lived? What if this whole thing was utter nonsense, something the witch had come up with off the top of her head? Her very tumor-riddled, not-quite-all-there head? Why the hell was he even taking her words into consideration? She was a patient hopped up on medication with a tumor sucking on her brain. She was probably delusional.

On the other hand, if he sat here and did nothing during Chase's surgery and Chase died on the table... What would that mean? Mere coincidence?

oOo

"_You've been evading it? For two days?"_

"_Yes."_

oOo

"_We all have to die at some time or another, Dr. House."_

oOo

"_He's going to die? And—and not you?"_

"_Yeah."_

oOo

"_If Chase dies today, so do you—save his life, and I save your life. See how that works?"_

"_But then you die." _

oOo

"_Someone has to die."_

_Someone has to die._

Someone.

House grabbed his cane and left the curtained-off room, returning two minutes later with a syringe in hand. He took in a deep breath, staring down at Chase.

"Sorry," he muttered, and then he pushed the needle into the IV tubing.

Almost immediately, Chase jerked. His whole body spasmed again, and again, and a flash of House went through House's mind before he could stop it. But then Chase slowly went still, until the only thing left moving was his head, which was still twitching to the side. As his heart rate slowed, his head rolled to one side and stopped jerking. The heart monitor sputtered, and then there was a long, unbroken tone.

He was flatlining.

"A little help in here!" House shouted, pocketing the empty syringe and reaching for his pager to call a code blue.


	5. Day Three, Part Two

**Die Another Day**

**Day Three**

_(Part 2)_

The PA system blared the alert for a code blue as two doctors and a handful of nurses came rushing in with a crash cart.

House hurriedly stepped out of the way, giving them all the room they needed to save Chase's life. He had two theories at the moment, and these next few minutes would tell him which one was right—and unfortunately, the best way to figure it out had been to mess with Chase. It was strange, though, because the drug was only supposed to cause Chase to seize, not flatline. But it didn't matter. The end result was the same and it would still give him the answers he wanted.

"Paddles!" a doctor called, and House watched as a nurse gelled them up and handed him over.

"Charging," the nurse said as an electric humming filled the area. "Clear!"

Chase's body jumped as the paddles hit him with an electric charge. The loud, piercing tone of the heart monitor didn't waver.

That was okay. Sometimes it took more than one shock to get a person going again.

"350," the doctor ordered, and the nurse turned the dial.

"Charging!"

Again, that electron buzz. It got louder and louder, until—

"Clear," the nurse said, and a second later, there was a snapping sound as the doctor send another jolt of electricity into Chase.

The heart monitor went on, a flat line mirroring its unending squall. Chase's blood pressure was tanking.

House swallowed and told himself that it might take three times. Chase would be fine, he just had to have a little faith in the abilities of these... people. He could do that. They saved dozens of lives every day—what was one more? Of course they would save him. He was being ridiculous, agonizing over this. His plan was foolproof.

"Bring it up to 400," the doctor said, holding up the paddles so that one of the nurses could reapply gel.

"Charging," the nurse said as the electric humming came again. It swelled, getting louder and louder, until—

It stopped.

Everyone in the room, from the doctor to the nurse to House, turned to stare at the machine. It had gone dark. No lights were lit on it, the dial had gone back down to zero, and the power button was still switched to ON.

"What happened?" the doctor demanded.

"I—nothing!" the nurse said, sounding panicked. Her hands fluttered over the machine, flipping the switches and turning cables as she tried to get it to come back to life. "I don't know! It just stopped working, I didn't do anything, I swear—"

"Somebody go get another one!" the doctor yelled, handing the paddles off to a nurse and grabbing a syringe off the crash cart.

House tried to swallow, but he felt as though his throat had closed up.

Then he noticed what the man was holding.

"Wrong syringe!" he shouted, pushing past the nurses and reaching out to grab the man's hand.

The doctor jerked away. "What are you doing?" he demanded furiously, trying to get past House.

House pushed back, desperate to keep the doctor away from Chase. "You've got the wrong syringe! That's a whole cc of epinephrine!"

The man glanced at his hand, and then he swore.

Turning around, House grabbed the .1 syringe of epinephrine off the cart and injected it into Chase's shoulder. He threw it back on the cart, throwing all biohazard procedures to hell, and then hooked his cane on the the rail of Chase's bed and began doing chest compressions.

He had to be the one to save Chase. His stupid plan had given death had gotten a bite of Chase, and it didn't want to let go of him—it was determined to keep Chase. It was reversed. Death wanted Chase and now House was the one who had to save him, had to bring him back to life instead of preventing his death in the first place. No, Chase's death had been his brilliant little scheme in the first place.

House bent over Chase's face, locking onto his mouth and breathing into his mouth, forcing air into the lungs. As he came up, he shouted, "Anyone got a defibrillator yet?"

Waiting for an answer, House started back on the chest compressions.

"Sir—"

"I'm a doctor," House snapped, pushing the other doctor back with his shoulder.

"Let me do my—"

"Got one!" the nurse called as she came back into the room, wheeling a defibrillator in front of her.

House grabbed the paddles before the other doctor could, holding them out to be gelled.

There was a pause as the nurses stared at him, and then glanced at the two other doctors in the room, seeking instruction.

"We don't have to time to play games," House snapped. "I'm Dr. House, Head of Diagnostics, pleased to meet you. Let me save his life."

Looking reluctant, the nurse leaned over and squirted gel on one of the paddles.

House clapped them together, rubbed, and then pulled them apart. "Charge it to 350."

"Charging," the nurse said, and the electronic humming came a second later. "Clear!"

Chase's body jolted, then went limp again and the heart monitor was silent.

House held his breath.

But then there was a beep, and another, and Chase's chest rose up as he took in a deep, shuddering breath. Along with him, the entire room seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. God knew how long Chase had been dead—how much brain damage had been done, how much was still occurring with the pressure still building in his skull—but at least he was alive. Death wouldn't get him just yet. And even better yet, House had the answer to his question.

The doctor, the one who had just been standing there helpfully this entire time, suddenly bent over to look at the side of Chase's head with a frown on his face. House would have gone to have a look for himself, but he was practically fenced into the spot he was standing because of all the people and wires and such.

"What?" he asked.

The doctor glanced at him, and then to the other doctor. "We need to get him into surgery. Right now."

"You can't put him in surgery," House said immediately. Surgery was a death sentence, because House couldn't follow him in there and do the procedure himself—the surgeon would kill him in five minutes. Chase would get a bad batch of anesthetic, the surgeon would sneeze while he was drilling, there would be a power outage, there would be some weird infection floating around the ER that would latch onto Chase's brain and kill him in days... No way. There was no way they were doing the surgery.

"He needs to get into emergency surgery," the man said, beginning to unhook Chase's saline bag from the IV pole. "He's bleeding out."

"He can't go into surgery!" House said loudly. He glanced at Chase, whose chest was rising and falling peacefully despite the fact that he was supposedly—oh shit. His ears. There was blood trickling out of Chase's ears, a crimson color that was sickening on his skin. But the surgery would kill him. Desperate, House said the first thing that came to mind. "I'm his medical proxy; you can't do the surgery."

"Are you kidding me?" the doctor demanded.

"Give me twenty minutes," House said, but even as he said it, he knew that it was ridiculous. Chase wouldn't live for twenty minutes—but he needed that time, that was all he needed. "Less than that. Fifteen."

"Don't be stupid! We can't wait—you're a doctor, you know that the longer we wait, the less likely it is he'll live. We need to go _now_," the doctor said. The nurses were grabbing his chart, flipping up the brakes on his bed, disconnecting and reconnecting wires, with no regard to House's protesting.

House opened his mouth to make another protest, but then he looked at Chase again. There was blood in his hair.

Chase was dead either way. He had only to choose whether it would be here or in the operating room.

Torn, House hesitated, and then he nodded.

"Do the surgery."

oOo

"You stupid bitch," House said, his voice low. He could barely contain the fury that was pounding him. "You stupid, selfish little bitch."

Contrary to all the other times he'd seen her, this time, the witch looked vaguely peaceful. "Dr. Chase isn't dead yet."

"He will be in a few minutes," House snapped.

"He's dying right now," the witch said, smiling faintly. "But don't worry. He's not in pain."

House gritted his teeth. "You put a death curse on me to save your own skin."

"I don't want to die, Dr. House," the witch said mildly. She frowned at him. "Can you understand? I thought I was going to die. I still am going to die, until Dr. Chase takes my place."

"Why him?" House demanded. "Why _him?_"

The witch shook her head. "It happens, I've heard. When you have two lives that are so intertwined, one soul can take the place of another."

House barely heard her. "You're going to die anyway! You'd let an innocent man die, just to live another day?"

"A day might be all you need to find the cure," the witch said.

"And what if it's not? Cameron dies? Are you gonna start killing off the janitors?" House shouted. "What if you're killing the person who was supposed to have cured you!"

"I don't want to die," the witch repeated. "That's all. I'm not a cruel person, Dr. House."

"House!"

House whirled around to find Cameron standing in the doorway, looking winded.

"Chase," Cameron said breathlessly.

The bottom of House's stomach dropped out.

"He's—something happened, and he hit his head and he's in surgery," Cameron said, leaning against the doorway as she caught her breath. "He's bleeding out of his ears and their drill just broke, and if they don't break the pressure, he's—"

"He's dying!" the witch crowed from her bed.

Cameron turned to stare at her, aghast.

"You don't want to do this," House said desperately. "You'll regret it. Just—just stop and let him live."

The witch shook her head, beginning to look excited. "I can't. He's slipping away, I can feel it. It's too late. There's nothing... Nothing anyone can..." Her breathing suddenly quickened, and then suddenly, her heart monitor began to race.

"She's choking!" Cameron said, rushing to help her.

"Don't!" House grabbed Cameron's arm and pulled her back, watching as the witch gasped for air. Her O2 states were going down and her blood pressure skyrocketing, and her face was going pale.

"You," she gasped out, staring House in the eye. Her hands gripped the railings of the bed, fingers like claws, and a sheen of sweat broke out on her face. "You and him... Intertwined..." Her mouth stayed open, her face contorting as she tried to suck in air that would not come. Muscles in her neck bulged as her face began turning bright red.

Cameron tried to pull away from his grip, but House yanked back so hard that she stumbled backwards.

"We have to help her!" Cameron said, fighting to get out of House's iron grip. "What the hell are you doing? We're—let me go—what is wrong with you? House!"

The heart monitor began to slow down. The witch's skin was tinged with blue and her eyes were bugging out of their sockets. She stared at House, a desperation in her eyes that begged him to save her, but House didn't move a muscle.

"We need some help in here!" Cameron was screaming. "Code blue! Code blue!"

The witch made a gasping noise, and then she threw her head back and her whole body began twisting and contorting—her mouth was open as though she was screaming, but she was absolutely silent.

"Fuck. You," House growled as he listened to the heart monitor's beeping slow down.

No one came rushing in with a crash cart.

The witch continued to writhe in some unheard pain, but it was gradually coming to a stop. Her body was relaxing, her skin gone gray, and her eyes had drooped shut. Her hands hands slipped off of the bedrails that she had been so desperately gripping. The heart monitor slowed.

Cameron was still calling for help, House didn't even hear it. He was focused on the witch, watching without regret as she died.

When she flatlined, House let go of Cameron.

Stumbling back at the sudden release, Cameron stared up at House for a long minute. House stared back coolly. Eventually, she came to her senses and rushed over to the witch's bed to begin doing chest compressions.

House turned around and left.

oOo

Chase lived through the surgery.

The surgeon said that there was a moment—the records would show it to have taken place around 2:00 PM—where they'd almost lost him, but after that, everything had went smoothly.

The witch was declared dead at 2:05 PM.

Cameron had tracked House down, but Wilson had apparently chased her away before she could get in the room.

And House waited for Chase to wake up.

oOo

House could only stare

Chase was alive—the beeping of the heart monitor was a blessed, constant reminder of that—but he didn't really look like it. His skin had a pale waxy color to it that was probably the result of some combination of the extreme blood loss he'd had today and the florescent lighting of the room, and he was so still. So still. House had seen people in comas before, but never anyone that he'd personally known. Only patients, distant relatives. But Chase was so still. He was never still when he was awake—he was always chewing on a pencil, jiggling his leg, fooling around with the red tennis ball, spinning around in House's office chair... Even when he slept, he talked in his sleep. If Chase had been sleeping right now, he would have been mumbling something about taking his earmuffs off the cookie.

But Chase was still. He looked almost peaceful.

Correction—he did look peaceful. Chase looked like he might slip away at any second, and that scared House. He felt like if he looked away for just a second, he'd lose Chase, and he'd almost lost him so many times today that it probably wouldn't be a stretch.

But Chase couldn't die. Not now, not after House had just watched the witch's death curse backfire on her (or whatever the hell that had been—he didn't know and frankly, he didn't care about it other than the fact that it meant that he and Chase were safe).

The last time Chase had been unconscious, House had talked to him and that had seemed to bring him back. He wanted to say something now, something witty and meaningful, something so clever that Chase would simply have to wake up just so that he could shoot back with something even better—but no words came to mind. House could only sit there and stare at Chase's waxen face, reminding himself that he didn't believe in god and that he didn't pray.

Looking at Chase's bald head and remembering the golden halo of hair that had been there only hours ago, House was pretty sure that he didn't believe in angels, either.

oOo

House had been planning on telling Chase what had happened. About the witch, the death curse, about how close they'd all come to dying yesterday—he'd even rehearsed it, or at least outlined it—but the silence of the room closed his throat up and left him unable to speak. As soon as he shut the door, the buzz of the hospital was shut out, leaving only the steady beep of the heart monitor in this vacuum. House could feel it pressing against his ears.

He couldn't speak. He could open his mouth, try to push the words out past his tongue, but he couldn't get them out. They got all jammed up in his throat.

There wasn't a protocol for dealing with coma patients. In House's book, if you weren't using them for their television, the quiet of their room, or to treat another patient, you were wasting time. What did people do with their unconscious loved ones besides talk to them? Hold their hand?

House shifted in his chair.

He could only be down here for so long. Despite the fact that they had no patients, it would only be an hour or so before someone came to chase him out to the clinic (three guesses who that would be). House didn't know why he was even here. Chase wasn't an 'unconscious loved one', he was just an employee who had happened to be at the right place at the right time, one too many times. And House was fairly certain that he didn't feel any guilt over the fact that Chase had almost died saving him because it hadn't been his fault. It _hadn't_. The homicidal bitch had been the one who'd cast the death curse.

_Whatever helps you sleep at night_, echoed through his mind. Furiously, House pushed the thought from his mind.

oOo

_Intertwined._

That had been what the witch had said, just before she'd died. He and Chase were intertwined, and that was why Chase had been the one to save his life over and over, why the death curse had turned on him after giving up on House, and also maybe why the witch's death curse had backfired. Her last word had been intertwined. People's last words were nothing to brush off—had she not been able to kill Chase because he was "intertwined" with House? What the hell did she mean by "intertwined", anyway?

House opened his mouth, intending to start reasoning aloud, but as he drew in a breath, he abruptly felt like his throat was closing up. His heart began to pound, and House quickly exhaled and forgot the idea.

Chase lay on the hospital bed, still as ever. A fine dusting of white-blond hair had begun to appear on his scalp, which looked weird, but House was sure that it would return to its darker golden color after it grew out a bit. Chase had probably had the white-blond hair when he'd been a child, and with green eyes and tanned skin, he'd probably looked like he'd been imported from California. Should he ever get the chance, House would have to search out Chase's apartment for pictures.

Intertwined. House came back to the word.

He and Chase were not intertwined. At least, not as far as he knew. Before the witch had come along, he'd been no more intertwined with Chase than he'd been with Foreman or the night janitor.

He supposed that the witch might not have meant intertwined in the relationship sense—maybe House was supposed to do something really important for Chase, or vice-versa, in the future. Maybe they were supposed to do something really important together in the future. After having someone send a death curse at you and having it almost kill you and your employee, it wasn't completely unreasonable to think that people really had destinies and such. Plus, it was better than the alternative.

The alternative. That he was definitely not thinking about.

oOo

House stepped out of the room and stopped, putting the McDonalds bag in the same hand that was holding his cane so that he could shut the door behind him. When the door had shut with a quiet snick and he turned back around, he found Wilson walking towards him from down the hallway.

"Is Chase the new Coma Guy?" Wilson asked as he came nearer.

"Actually, he's taken the place of Vegetative State Guy," House said conversationally. "Coma Guy got more channels, though—think I could talk to Cuddy about discriminating patient entertainment?"

"Probably not," Wilson said. He paused and looked serious for a moment, and just when House thought that Wilson was going to ask how he was doing (or something equally sentimental), Wilson surprised him by changing the subject. "There's someone up in your office that wants to talk to you."

"I'll be in the clinic," House said quickly, turning a sharp right to get on the elevator.

"House!" Wilson called.

House turned back to see Wilson standing in the spot where he'd turned.

"It's about Chase."

oOo

Entering the room, House felt more somber than he had in days. And maybe that was just because before, he'd been unwilling to really take in the gravity of the situation, but there was no denial now. Reality had come down to set him straight.

Chase somehow looked even more pathetic today. His skin had retained that waxy, pale color that he'd developed after the surgery, and the tan bandage on his arm from the stitches he'd gotten after the coffee pot incident contrasted sharply. His hair hadn't even reached the length of a decent buzz cut yet—it was still white, still just barely visible. His face had begun to take on a sunken look, particularly around the eyes. House wondered how he'd been able to sit in here yesterday and eat food, because looking at Chase now made him feel slightly ill.

He exhaled quietly, walking from one side of the bed to the other. He turned around and began pacing.

_Swallow. _

_Open mouth. _

_Inhale. _

House paused, mouth open, but he couldn't do it. He couldn't find the words.

_Swallow_.

_Open mouth._

_Inhale._

"You're an idiot."

The words seemed to bounce off the walls. House's eyes immediately went to Chase, hoping that the three words would somehow rouse him from his coma that very minute.

They did not.

House sighed, but now that the silence had been broken once, he felt like it would be easier the second time. He needed to speak. If not for Chase, then for himself, because there were definitely some things that needed to be said, and besides that, this whole situation was absolutely ridiculous. He shouldn't be afraid to talk just because Chase was unconscious.

"No one in their right mind picks me as their medical proxy," House said, pushing past the feeling that he shouldn't be doing this. He _needed_ to do this. "I don't know what you were thinking, but your reasoning was incredibly stupid. As soon as you wake up, we're going to fix that."

He swallowed and stopped pacing. He made his way over the side of the bed and stared down at Chase, then he sat down in the chair and leaned forward.

"The witch is dead. She died four days ago. Turned out there _was_ a death curse—she'd put it on me so that whatever disease she had wouldn't kill her before we diagnosed her, or some crazy logic like that. Then death—go out on a limb with me here and think of death as a person—got impatient with me and decided to turn on you instead. The witch said that we're..." House hesitated. "Intertwined. Which is why you kept saving me, apparently. She would have made herself a whole lot clearer if she'd used a metaphor, but anyway. After you passed out on the motorcycle, I, at great personal risk to myself, rushed you to the hospital and with the help of my charming personality, managed to get you immediate help. We'll skip over the details of why you passed out in the first place—think of it as motivation to wake up—and skip to the part where I heroically..."

oOo

"So now we're home free. Ding-dong, the witch is dead and all that good stuff. The only thing left to do is for you to wake up, because you're occupying this room that someone with better hair could be using. Not to mention, do you know how much time I'm wasting down here? It's freezing. They need to turn off the fucking air conditioning. And sitting in this chair is like sitting in a urinal. And then Wilson's getting all these crazy ideas—he thinks that I care about you or something. Every time he looks at me, he gets this annoying smirk on his face, like he knows something I don't, and if you don't wake up soon I'm going to strangle him." House paused to take a drink of his Sprite. "And besides that, you owe me big time."

He exhaled, done talking for the moment, and stared at Chase. Then he leaned over and said in a stage whisper, "This is the part where you wake up."

But Chase didn't wake up, his chest rising and falling in even breaths as it had for the last five days.

House sat back in his chair. With every day that passed, the chances of brain damage went up. The chances of Chase waking up went down. He was scheduled for deep-brain electrical stimulation tonight in the hopes that it would wake him up, and if that didn't work... It meant nothing good. It wouldn't mean anything good either, if Chase woke up with severe brain damage. House knew that it was almost beyond the odds now for everything to be all right, but dammit, how were he and Chase supposed to be intertwined if Chase died? There was still something that they had to do, something that they had to achieve together. Chase would have to wake up and be fine—it was fucking written in the stars.

This settled, House drained the last of his Sprite and stood up to go talk to Chase's lawyer.

oOo

"House."

House looked up to see Foreman standing above him in those ridiculous pink scrubs of his. His expression was grim, and House forgot to breathe for a second.

No.

Quickly, regaining his senses, House demanded, "What, is he dead already?"

They were only five minutes into Chase's surgery—why was Foreman out here? Nothing had gone wrong. It couldn't have. They were home free from death, and they had a weirdo destiny thing to achieve. What could have possibly gone wrong in five minutes?

Foreman shook his head and sighed. "House, why are you here? We all know that you hate Chase. Just leave him alone already."

"Why are you out here, if Chase isn't dead?" House asked, ignoring what Foreman had said and pushing for the information that he needed.

"We're not doing it," Foreman said. "The surgery. He woke up just before we were about to start."

House stared.

"He's not good," Foreman added quietly. "He has motor function, but he seems almost delusional. They're doing some basic neurological tests right now, and he's scheduled for an MRI in the morning—House? House! Where are you going? He's not even coherent. He thinks you died!"

If anything, Foreman's words only made House walk faster.

Chase thought he was dead—which meant that he wasn't delusional, wasn't brain damaged, probably just hysterical. Foreman was wrong. The moron had also probably mentioned the death curse, the witch, and all the other freaky paranormal things that had gone on over the last week or so, which probably hadn't helped him on the no-neurological-damage front. It was no wonder Foreman thought that Chase had gone bonkers. House just had to get in there before they made any declarations on how much brain damage had been done.

They'd probably moved him back to his regular room, which was on the floor above this one, which meant that it was going to take at least five minutes to get up there. Fuck. He wanted to see Chase _now. _ He didn't have the patience to wait for the elevator.

But he had to. As House stood in front of the brown doors, memories of their near-death escapade in the elevator played through his mind. The banter and the panic were the two things that House remembered most vividly. And the part where Chase had pulled them into a free fall from the elevator, where House's stomach had dropped out and he'd wanted to scream but couldn't, where he'd been waiting for the impact that hadn't come. Someone had caught them. Who had it been? Had it...

The firemen. That was right.

As the elevator doors opened, House wondered how he could have forgotten such a detail.

But then, he reasoned, the firemen had been a domino in the long run of dear-death experiences he'd had over those three days.

The mongrels had finally stopped drifting in and out of his office to look at his balcony (or lack thereof) just yesterday. It had been ruled as a manufacturer's defect, and plans to build a new one were already beginning to take shape. Personally, House wasn't sure whether or not he wanted to have a new one up there. On one hand, it gave him an excellent outlet for annoying Wilson—on the other hand, he'd almost died there and wasn't sure if he'd want to be on a similar one again. He knew the fear was irrational. He wasn't afraid to make coffee, or to be on this elevator right now, and really, the idea of the balcony didn't really scare him. It just wasn't something that he particularly wanted to do.

The doors opened and House took off down the hallway, his eyes scanning the plates next to each room, looking for Chase's. He wasn't sure where he would turn if Chase wasn't in his room, but he didn't really feel like thinking about that right now. Anyway, there seemed to be a commotion going on further down the hallway, and it was in the general area of Chase's room. Maybe...

Nope.

That was the patient in the room next to Chase, coding. The door to Chase's room was shut, but when House opened it, he found two doctors in there with Chase—who was indeed, wide awake and faintly hysterical.

"Please. Please just tell me," Chase said desperately.

"We can't tell you until you complete the neurological exam, Dr. Chase," one of the doctors said—obviously not for the first time, judging by his tone. "It won't take more than twenty minutes, and then we can—"

"I don't have any brain damage!" Chase yelled, and House watched as his attempts to lift his arms were foiled by... restraints? "Just tell me if he's alive!"

"Dr. House—"

"Is alive," House cut in, barely containing his rage.

Everyone in the room turned to stare at him.

"Get out," House said through gritted teeth. "Now. Dr. Foreman will do the neurological exam."

"He's all yours," one of the doctors muttered, throwing the clipboard and pen down on Chase's bed and stalking out of the room. The other followed after a moment's hesitation, rolling his eyes as he passed House on the way out.

That left House and Chase alone.

The only sound in the room was the beeping of the heart monitor and the sound of Chase's ragged breathing. For a long moment, no one moved. House stared at Chase, who stared back at him with wide eyes. Then, wordlessly, House crossed the room and began undoing one of the restraints.

"They wouldn't tell me," Chase whispered.

House snapped off the buckle and slid it off of Chase's hand. "You shouldn't have wanted to know."

Chase blinked, looking drained and confused. "Why not?"

Moving to the other side of the bed, House didn't respond.

"What's happened?" Chase asked, drawing his wrists together as soon as both of them were free. He lowered them and kept them together, as though afraid that someone would put the restraints back on.

"You were unconscious for five days," House said shortly, stepping back from the bed.

If it were possible, Chase's face became even paler. "Five days?"

"And the first thing you worry about when you wake up is whether or not I'm alive?" House exploded, unable to hold it back any longer. "Jesus Christ, Chase! Get a goddamn life! The world doesn't revolve around me. Go get a girlfriend or something."

Chase's mouth fell open, and he appeared to be speechless.

"Also, you're changing your medical proxy," House continued without regard to Chase's stunned expression. "I don't want to care for you. I don't care _about _you. I'll just do what I want to do, not what you want, and I speak from experience when I say that those situations don't work out. So save it for someone who actually gives a whit about your happiness, because _I_ certainly don't. Now that this death-curse thing is over, you can go about your merry way without having to save me every other hour."

Incredulous, Chase stared at him for another second, then he let his head fall back on his pillow and he started laughing.

It was House's turn to stare.

When Chase finally looked at him, there was a faintly amused smile on his face. He shook his head and exhaled. "Is that really the best you can do, House? You're going to scare me away by telling me that you _don't care_, that I can leave you behind now that you don't need me anymore? I'm disappointed in you."

House blinked, feeling suddenly like he was about to get the rug pulled out from under him. He scrambled to grab hold of something. "I don't like you. You're annoying as all—"

"Liar," Chase said flatly, cutting him off.

Silence.

The heart monitor beeped.

"Screw it," House muttered, and then he leaned over and kissed him.

oOo

"So the deep-brain electrical stimulation was really a stretch, and your lawyer was adamant that if it didn't work, we would label you as PVS—in which case, we'd pull the metaphorical plug and let you die." House paused. "Which, by the way, is the most retarded thing I've ever heard. Your lawyer got an earful about the difference between a coma and a vegetative state."

A half-smile worked its way onto Chase's face, despite the fact that he looked exhausted. He'd been struggling to stay awake for the last five minutes or so, and House had been pretending not to notice..

"But obviously, you woke up before we could do anything with your brain, so that deal's off," House said. He thought for a minute, reviewing everything that he'd told Chase about the last five days and checking to make sure that he hadn't missed anything. "And... that's about it. See all the exciting stuff you missed out on?"

"Mm," Chase said noncommittally, his eyes closing.

House glanced over at him from the chair he was sitting in. "You still owe me a blowjob, by the way."

Chase let out a quiet snort of laughter, his eyes still shut.

"And I think it's bedtime," House said at last, knowing that Chase would be falling asleep within minutes even if he kept talking.

Sleepily, Chase nodded and drew the sheets closer to himself. "You going?"

House hesitated, then answered. "Nope. Staying right here."

"Kay," Chase mumbled.

House watched him drift off to sleep, listening to his breathing even out, and then he glanced at his hand just to reassure himself.

His fingers were firmly intertwined with Chase's.


End file.
